The New York Times reports that state pro-life laws that have taken effect since the Supreme Court’s June 24 Dobbs decision have already saved thousands of lives:
Thirteen states banned or severely restricted abortion during those months, mostly in the South, and legal abortions in those states fell to close to zero, according to detailed estimates made by a consortium of academics and abortion providers. Nine more states added major abortion restrictions, and legal abortions in those states fell by a third. In states with bans and restrictions, there were about 22,000 fewer abortions in July and August, compared with the baseline of April, before the decision.
In states where abortion remained legal, the number of abortions increased by roughly 12,000, or 11 percent. That suggests that around half of women who were unable to get abortions in states with bans traveled to another state to get one.
But even with those increases, thousands of abortions appear to have been prevented by the new state laws.
Many state laws protecting the lives of human beings in the womb did not immediately take effect on June 24, so the number of lives saved each month could increase as more data is released.
In 2019, researchers from Middlebury College, the Guttmacher Institute, and the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health estimated that the end of Roe could save 100,000 lives per year.