The number of abortions in the dozen or more states which claim to have entirely banned the lethal procedure appear to be rapidly increasing as more women access self-managed abortions, according to a new analysis from the Foundation to Abolish Abortion.
Roughly fourteen states, including Oklahoma, Kentucky, Missouri, Alabama, and Texas, were widely reported by conservative media outlets to have fully banned abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago. Yet one study from the University of Texas at Austin showed that those same states witnessed the greatest increases for abortion pill orders in the nation immediately after the landmark decision was overturned.
The study, which was based on data from the online abortion pill provider Aid Access, found that between the leak of the Dobbs v. Jackson draft decision and the period immediately after the formal decision, Louisiana saw an increase from 5.6 weekly abortion pill orders per 100,000 female residents through the website to 14.9 weekly orders per 100,000 female residents. Mississippi saw an increase from 2.2 weekly orders to 7.8 weekly orders over the same time horizon, while Arkansas saw an increase from 2.1 weekly orders to 7.1 weekly orders.
The analysis from the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, which noted that Aid Access represents 46% of the self-managed abortion market and that 88% of the women who order pills follow through with murdering their children, estimated that some 51,000 babies were aborted in the states with purported bans in the twelve months after the Dobbs decision. Aid Access reported a 270% rise in orders one year after the decision, meaning that the number of self-managed abortions in the states could have reached 94,000 over the subsequent twelve months.
“While this more recent data is less certain, the trend is nonetheless clear: self-managed abortion in states with ‘bans’ is a growing problem, increasingly blunting any effect the ‘bans’ may have had in curbing the supply of abortion in these states,” the Foundation to Abolish Abortion noted. “These numbers confirm that, because no states’ laws are considered to prohibit self-managed abortion, babies in all fifty states remain essentially unprotected.”
Most pro-life establishment organizations indeed oppose criminal penalties for women who willfully seek abortions, while the majority of states with pro-life majorities in their legislatures have laws explicitly exempting women from prosecution in the case of an abortion, according to a recent analysis from the Charlotte Lozier Institute. Several dozen pro-life organizations endorsed a letter two years ago asserting that “women are victims of abortion” and clarifying that the groups stand against “any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women.”
Foundation to Abolish Abortion President Bradley Pierce, a constitutional attorney who has drafted a number of bills seeking to establish equal protection under the law for preborn babies, has contended that “current laws in pro-life states not only fail to curb the growing number of self-managed pill abortions, but by giving complete immunity to women who abort, they actually create the conditions for this method of abortion to expand freely.”
Hospitals and abortion clinics report the number of children they murder via abortion to state and federal health agencies, but data from self-managed abortions is not reported. Women in states with tighter regulations have also increasingly crossed state lines to obtain abortions.
