Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, at least 30,000 babies have been born who would otherwise have been aborted, according to a new study published this month.
All 32,000 babies were born in states that enacted some form of abortion restriction, according to the study by the Institute for Labor Economics that analyzed the effects of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which returned the issue. of abortion to the states.
“Our primary analysis indicates that in the first six months of 2023, births increased by an average of 2.3 percent in states that implemented total abortion bans compared to a control group of states where abortion rights remained. protected, representing approximately 32,000 additional births annually as a result of abortion bans,” according to the study.
The trio of researchers who conducted the study said the change represented the “most profound transformation of the abortion access landscape in the United States in 50 years,” according to preliminary birth data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). ) from the United States.
People attend the 50th annual March for Life rally in front of the US Supreme Court.Getty Images
“As of November 1, 2023, 14 states are imposing abortion bans in almost all circumstances, and 23 percent of American women of reproductive age have experienced an increase in driving distance to the nearest abortion facility.” nearby, averaging 43 miles by road. much earlier than Dobbs at 330 miles today,” the study found.
But Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, told the New York Times that the research indicated a “triumph of pro-life policies resulting in lives saved.”
“The implication of much coverage of this data is that it is bad that there are more children welcomed in states with better laws than in states that speed up abortion,” he said.
At least 30,000 additional births occurred after Roe v. Wade, according to a new study. Getty Images
Alison Gemmill, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, by contrast, told CNN that the new numbers indicated “an assault on reproductive autonomy.”
“We don’t always detect signals in these population aggregates because there is a lot of variation when you group everyone together,” he said. “The fact that there is a signal at the population level means that something is really happening. It’s pretty strong evidence,” because fertility rates, or the number of births per woman of reproductive age, don’t usually change dramatically.
The study’s authors argued that evidence suggests that “decreased access to abortion represents a risk to the health and financial stability of this vulnerable population.”
“In 2020, approximately 1 in 5 pregnancies ended in abortion,” the study says. “At the time they seek abortions, 75 percent of patients are low-income, 59 percent have given birth previously, and 55 percent report a recent disruptive event in their life, such as falling behind on a pregnancy payment. rent or lose your job.”
The study authors argued that evidence suggests that “decreased access to abortion represents a risk to the health and financial stability of this vulnerable population.” Getty Images
The findings provided a detailed look at the implications of last year’s landmark Supreme Court decision.
The effects on abortion were “especially large” for Hispanic women and women ages 20 to 24, and results indicated that birth rates increased by an average of 4.7% and 3.3% respectively. Additionally, depending on the geography of abortion restrictions that made interstate travel more expensive, the percentages increased by 4.4% in Mississippi and 5.1% in Texas.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn