#WeCount – a project of the pro-abortion Society of Family Planning (SFP), which is funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Buffett Foundation, both of whom have invested in abortion pill manufacturer Danco – recently released updated data which purports to compare the number of U.S. abortions before and after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
Although the organization’s previous report showed an overall decline in the number of abortions committed post-Dobbs, its current report shows the opposite, claiming a cumulative increase of 2,200 abortions per month. This has been spun by various media outlets as evidence that pro-life laws are not effective.
But is this conclusion supported by the evidence? Here are some reasons to eye this report with some skepticism:
1. Limited accuracy and comprehensiveness
It should be noted that there are limitations to the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the data presented. SFP admits that only 82% of the abortion facilities known to them provided data for this report. Data was imputed (estimated) for the remaining 18%. SFP further admits that it cannot account for so-called “self-managed” abortions, which it defines as “any attempt to end a pregnancy outside the formal healthcare system, including using medications, herbs or something else, or obtaining pills from friends or online without clinical assistance.”
2. Unequal comparisons
As Charlotte Lozier Institute Research Associate Dr. Michael New has noted, SFP compared a year’s worth of post-Dobbs data to a mere two months’ worth of pre-Dobbs data. The pre-Dobbs data used represents “a small number of datapoints,” New told Live Action News. “The number of abortions performed in these months may not be representative of the number of abortions performed in other months before the Dobbs decision. I would have more confidence in their data if they compared a year’s worth of post-Dobbs data to a year’s worth of pre-Dobbs data,” New concluded.
Dr. New also pointed out that “Texas and Oklahoma were already enforcing strong pro-life laws before Dobbs. That makes the abortion declines in these states after Dobbs appear less dramatic.”
3. Dramatic decreases in pro-life states
The SFP report itself asserts that “States with abortion bans experienced the greatest reductions in numbers of abortions. In states with total abortion bans, cumulatively there have been 94,930 fewer clinician-provided abortions in the year since Dobbs,” adding, “This change represents a decrease of 100% in the number of abortions, comparing pre-Dobbs 2022 and June 2023.”
The report also notes that states with permissive abortion laws saw the greatest increases in the numbers of abortions committed within their borders during this timeframe.
In other words, contrary to media hype, SFP’s report shows that pro-life laws save lives, while pro-abortion laws unsurprisingly lead to an increase in preborn deaths due to abortion.
This finding is bolstered by comparisons of Texas’ birth data prior to and subsequent to the implementation of that state’s heartbeat act in 2021. Analyses of that data conducted by the Charlotte Lozier Institute and the Journal of the American Medical Association both showed an increase in Texas births to the tune of over 1,000 per month.
Conclusion
It is impossible to know exactly how many abortions are being committed in the United States for many reasons, not the least of which are the activities of organizations like Aid Access, which operate outside of normal regulatory structures and which do not report the number of abortions they are responsible for to organizations like SFP. In addition, there are no federal laws that require reporting of abortion statistics, and state laws vary.
What we can safely conclude, however, is that pro-life laws accomplish what they are intended to effect – namely, a significant increase in the number of lives saved from abortion.
