According to a recent report on the online source FiveThirtyEight, the Dobbs decision has made a big difference.
“There were almost 94,000 fewer abortions in states that implemented bans post-Dobbs, just between July and March,” author Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux summarized in a Twitter thread. “Almost 100k affected and that’s not even the full year.” And, in states without bans, “Abortions rose by ~70,000.” In other words, the Dobbs decision from the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the abortion decision back to the states has meant a net decrease of 24,000 abortions nationwide.
Some bans have had a more significant impact than others. For example, abortion in states that “have banned abortion after six weeks ... [abortions] tend to drop by 50-60%. If that happened in FL, where a six-week ban is pending, we could be talking about 4k fewer abortions MONTHLY.”
To be clear, Thomson-DeVeaux is alarmed by these numbers.
At the same time, data points to huge shifts in how abortion is attained in America, most notably abortion tourism and an uptick in chemical abortions. So, the work continues. And yet, it is safe to say that elections matter.
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