The Houston Chronicle reported on a study that showed one of the consequences of a state law that does not permit women who are the victims of rape or incest to obtain an abortion. In addition, teen births rose for the first time in 15 years.
Texas saw an estimated 26,313 rape-related pregnancies during the 16 months after the state outlawed all abortions, with no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest, according to a study published Wednesdayin the Journal of the American Medical Association.
That’s the highest figure among the 14 states with total abortion bans, with Texas having the largest population, according to the study.
“Survivors who need abortion care should not have their reproductive autonomy further undermined by state policy,” said one of the authors, Dr. Kari White, of the Texas-based Resound Research for Reproductive Health…
Following the June 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, the researchers estimated there were 519,981 rapes associated with 64,565 pregnancies during the four to 18 months after states implemented total abortion bans. Of those pregnancies, an estimated 5,586 occurred in states with exceptions for rape and 58,979 in states with no exceptions.
Of the five states with rape exceptions, strict gestational limits and requirements to report the rape to law enforcement make it harder for most survivors to qualify, the study said. There were 10 or fewer legal abortions per month in the five states with rape exceptions, the study said, indicating that survivors with access to abortion care still cannot receive it in their home state…
Behind Texas, the states with the highest totals were Missouri (5,825), Tennessee (4,990), Arkansas (4,660), Oklahoma (4,530), Louisiana (4,290) and Alabama (4,130).
As a woman and a mother, I cannot understand a law requiring a woman to bear her rapist’s baby. The child would be a daily reminder of a terrible act of violence. I know what my decision would be. Other women may feel differently. Each woman in that situation should be allowed to decide what to do.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
By no means am I in favor of these laws but I’d like to know the statistical assumptions that this study makes. A half million rapes in five states within 16 months seems extremely high.
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14 states, correction. And 18 months. But the number still seems extremely high.
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Assuming they are off by half the amount, that would still get my attention. Come to think of it, if there were only one such case, would it not be a problem?
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Yeah the overall point that one should draw is the same, it’s terrible.
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Roy
Adding, estimates for number of American women raped in their lifetimes range from 1 in 3 to 1 in 6 (depends on state reporting).
Then, there is the issue of underreporting.
Rep. Bill Dean in the Ohio legislature says wives, by definition, can’t be raped by their husbands.
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Adding, as some of us know from the public pronouncements of GOP politicians, one ignorant, false view is that physiologically, women can’t get pregnant from rape.
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Adding, the CDC reports that 20% of women who were raped by an intimate partner reported the partners intended to get them pregnant against their will.
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FLERP,
I have the same take on this posting. I’m pro-choice, but this data seems very unreliable. The number of rape-related pregnancies is unbelievably high. But this alleged study advances a preferred narrative, so this blog’s host credulously reports on it. The job of a genuine scholar is to think critically, not recite ideological dogmas.
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Roy’s point is valid, through. If the real number is half, or one fifth, or one 20th, or even fewer, it doesn’t really change the analysis from the perspective of the woman.
I think a lot of the variables underlying projections like this are based on surveys, which can be tricky. I.E., how do you estimate the prevalence of rape when not all rapes are reported? Surveys. How reliable are the surveys and how were they worded? I don’t know.
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FLERP, please see the note I just posted.
If anything, rapes are underreported.
I haven’t heard from any female readers who think the number is too high.
In any event, the data come from a reputable source and I have no independent means of recalculating it. I am a person, not an organization.
If you have ways of discounting the findings, cite your source, not your gut feeling.
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From CNN:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/01/24/health/rape-pregnancy-abortion/index.html
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I don’t know if I should be amused or annoyed that you think o should have independent means to challenge the data in a widely reported study by reputable researchers.
If you think the data are wrong, complain to the researchers.
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Almost every woman who has become a close friend or lover of mine over the years has told me about a time or times when she was raped. So, when I read high figures for numbers of rapes, I am not in the least surprised.
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The study was published by the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine.
It was reported in every respectable media outlet.
Here is NPR:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/24/1226161416/rape-caused-pregnancy-abortion-ban-states
Why would I have a greater ability to check the facts presented than does NPR or major newspapers?
If you think the data are wrong, contact the researchers, not me.
This is an excerpt from the NPR report:
They estimate in a research letter published Wednesday in JAMA Internal Medicine that 64,565 pregnancies have been caused by rape in the 14 states where abortion is banned.
The figure, while an estimate that may spark some debate, is an important data point since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Supreme Court decision overturned the federal guarantee of abortion rights. While there once was political consensus that abortion should be permitted in cases of rape, that has changed. Few states with total bans on abortion have exceptions for rape. Those that have exceptions require victims to report the rape to authorities, something that research shows happens only in a small fraction of sexual assaults.
A data challenge
To arrive at the figure of nearly 65,000 rape-caused pregnancies, researchers first estimated the number of rapes that occurred in the states with abortion bans, while those bans were in effect — time periods that vary state-to-state.
“We used the best available research and data that we’re aware of to come up with the fraction of women of reproductive age who are survivors of — and the terminology here is horrible — completed vaginal rape,” Dickman explains. “The foundation was a survey that the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] conducted that we think is probably the most accurate estimate of not just the sexual assaults that were reported to law enforcement, but also those that weren’t reported to law enforcement.”
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They then used Bureau of Justice Statistics data on criminal victimization and FBI Uniform Crime Reports to assess the number of vaginal rapes of women, ages 15-45, that happened in those 14 states while abortion bans were in effect. The number they arrived at is approximately 520,000 rapes.
Finally, they calculated that 12.5% of those assaults would result in a pregnancy, based on CDC data. “These are hard numbers to come up with — there’s no kind of systematic collection at the level of health care providers to be able to answer this question of what’s the pregnancy rate among people who have been victims of a completed vaginal rape,” Dickman acknowledges. “This is kind of the best we could do.”
Their total estimate of pregnancies due to rape in states with abortion bans is 64,565.
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Oh, but wait! Aren’t crime rates down? That’s what the MSM is feeding us daily? I guess rape isn’t considered a crime anymore….or maybe we’re being fed manipulated data?
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Governor Abbott in a Texas pledged to get rid of rape so no woman would need an abortion. No exemptions in Texas. Still waiting.
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The links that Diane Ravitch posted DON’T ADDRESS whether the rates for rape are going up or down. They simply say that rapes STILL HAPPEN. Crime rates can go down and crime still happens.
I am a critic of the MSM, but they certainly have never said that rape or murder or crime no longer happens. I have no idea the motivation for someone suggesting that Diane Ravitch is using “manipulated data”, while providing no plausible reason for making that accusation.
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What makes this kind of study far more important is that the researchers are TRANSPARENT about how they got the numbers. It presumes certain things and people can argue that women DO report rape 90% of the time so the assumptions are off, but the larger point is that someone getting pregnant as a result of a rape is NOT rare.
If only the folks on the far right making these kind of claims were as transparent about the evidence they used. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to need any evidence to support their beliefs that are the equivalent of insisting that the earth is flat.
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I still don’t understand why a commenter earlier today criticized for not fact-checking data published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal.
Maybe he could give me advice on how to do that.
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OMG…draconian.
Diane, I want to “THANK YOU” for your posts.
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You are so welcome. I read voraciously and share what matters most and hope you agree with my choices.
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Diane, YOU ROCK!
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Do religious sects have responsibility for the abortion bans? If so, which are most accountable?
It’s effective practice when exposing adverse consequences of political decisions to identify cause/those culpable. For example, Charles Koch is named as responsible for climate change denial. Jeffrey Yass and Walmart heirs are named in association with school privatization, etc.
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The Catholic Church and evangelical Christians oppose abortion. They are major religious denominations, and with some research one can find their connections to think tank and PACs that work for abortion bans.
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Thank you Bonnie
It should be noted that there are no evangelical Christians on SCOTUS.
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The public often reads and hears about ADF (employs Josh Hawley’s wife). ADF’s Catholic counterpart which employed Josh Hawley is Becket Law. It has an 8-0 record on SCOTUS cases since 2012.
The website, Reckon, posted, “What you need to know about Becket Law, the legal advocacy group that’s escalating the abortion crisis” (8-10-2023).
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A reporter should review which of the two major sects receives more support from Charles Koch.
The legal scholar credited with advancing religious charter schools is a Manhattan Institute Fellow and Notre Dame professor (friend of Amy Comey Barrett).
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THE BIBLE DOES NOT CONDEMN ABORTION
Out of more than 600 laws of Moses, which includes The Ten Commandments, NONE — not one — rejects abortion. In fact, the Mosaic law in Exodus 21:22-25 clearly shows that causing the abortion of a fetus is NOT MURDER. Exodus 21:22-25 says that if a woman’s fetus dies as the result of an altercation with a man, the man who caused the death of the fetus should only pay a fine that is to be determined by the woman’s husband; but if the woman dies, the man is to be executed: “If a man strives with a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet there is no harm to the woman, he shall be punished according to what the woman’s husband determines and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if the woman dies, then it shall be life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” Ex. 21:22-25. So, the Bible orders the death penalty for murder of a human being — the mother — but not for the death of a fetus because the fetus is not yet a human being.
There are Christian denominations that allow abortion in most instances; these denominations include the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church USA. The United Methodist Church and Episcopal churches also allow abortion in cases of medical necessity. If abortion is anything more than a denominational belief and is absolutely forbidden by the Bible, how is it that all the millions of Christians in these Christian denominations allow abortion?
The opposition to abortion comes from Christians who believe that a full-fledged human being is created at the instant of conception. Note that is a religious BELIEF and religious beliefs cannot be recognized by our government because that is unconstitutional according to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of our Constitution. Moreover, the belief that a fetus is a human person, complete with a soul, is an interpretation of the Old Testament by only some Christian denominations — not by all. Plus, Jewish scholars whose ancestors actually wrote the Old Testament and who know best what the words of the Old Testament mean say that is a WRONG INTERPRETATION of their Old Testament writings.
Those Christians who oppose abortion largely base their view that a fetus is a complete human being and that abortion is murder on the Jewish Bible’s Psalm 139: “You knit me together in my mother’s womb…You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born.”
But, who better to translate the true meaning of Psalm 139 than the Jews who wrote it? And Jewish scholars point out that Psalm 139 merely describes the development of a fetus and does not mean that the fetus has a soul and is a person. In fact, the Jewish Talmud explains that for the first 40 days of a woman’s pregnancy, the fetus is considered “mere fluid” and is just part of the mother’s body, like an appendix or liver. Only after the fetus’s head emerges from the womb and takes a breath is the baby considered a “nefesh” — Hebrew for “soul” or “spirit” — a human person.
Benjamin Franklin, key Founding Father of America, shaper and signer of our Constitution, published a handbook titled “The American Instructor” that featured a long, detailed section on do-it-yourself abortion and conception prevention. The book was very popular throughout America, especially in the many farming towns where unwanted pregnancies were an economic hardship on farming families.
Franklin’s book should be republished and complimentary copies given to each of the “originalists” on the Court who claim that America has always been opposed to abortion.
https://www.propublica.org/article/abortion-roe-wade-alito-scotus-hale
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You may be interested in the Frankfurt Declaration for Christian and Civil Liberties which was signed by the executive director of Make Liberty Win PAC, an offshoot of Koch-funded Young Americans for Liberty.
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Very good logical points! Choice for women was a sane ruling. It allowed women to make their own decisions about their body and health under the advice of a doctor. It kept the matter personal and not political, and nobody was forcing Catholics or evangelicals to get an abortion. The current situation in red states is barbaric for young women.
On the evening news there was a story about how young women are having second thoughts about attending college in a red state where they will be second class citizens.
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Thank you. Exactly right.
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Back in the 1980s, when a woman’s right to control her own body seemed enshrined in American law forever, and (to a college student) the days where abortion was illegal seemed like ancient history, I took a US history seminar where one of the assigned books was “Abortion in America”, by James C. Mohr. (I just checked and it was published in 1979!)
That book stuck with me, because I was absolutely shocked to learn that abortion used to be legal in the 1800s! The first sentence of the book:
“In 1800 no jurisdiction in the United States had enacted any statutes whatsoever on the subject of abortion; most forms of abortion were not illegal and those American women who wished to practice abortion did so. Yet by 1900 virtually every jurisdiction in the United States had laws upon its books that proscribed the practice sharply and declared most abortions to be criminal offenses.”
The legal idea of “quickening” was when the woman herself could detect fetal movement, and that was many months into a pregnancy.
What I recall is the professor explaining how some of the early anti-abortion laws were based in anti-Catholic prejudice, not because they were being pushed by Catholics. The people in power – who weren’t Catholic – had a huge fear of the Catholic population increasing exponentially because they had very large families and Protestants had fewer children.
Catholic women didn’t need a law to prevent them from having an abortion. But non-Catholic women did. So one factor was trying to force Protestant women to have their babies so keep the Protestant population high, by those in power who were anti-Catholic.
Today, being anti-abortion seems mainly about controlling women. Or about flexing power. Given that the far right concern for the baby’s life seems to disappear immediately once they are born, it is less about the fetus, and more about politics.
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You are so right. The “right to life” ends at the moment of the first breath. From that point on, the mother and child are on their own.
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NYC
You are correct that abortion bans are about controlling women just as the lesser burkas are used by the Taliban to control women. Some misogynistic conservatives admit to it. Robert P George described their opinion, abortion makes people promiscuous. George didn’t single out women in his summary statement but, the men’s views he quotes, do.
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The religion in Gaza is very conservative. Women are second class citizens. Gays are forbidden. Burkas of course.
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quikwrit– I find it much more convincing to simply follow the course of the law in this country. Colonial settlers brought the English Common Law with them. In English Common Law, which existed long before colonial settlement here, abortion was never a legal issue until after “quickening,” which was defined as when the pregnant woman began to feel the baby moving/ kicking inside. That occurs earliest 16 wks, latest 25 wks, say average 21 wks of gestation, but allowing up to 25 wks. [Note this corresponds closely with “viability” per Roe v Wade, which was estimated at about 24 wks].
That was the law here, from 1620 Mayflower landing until roughly 1868, at which point most states banned abortion. So, 250 yrs.
It is important to note that the primary motivation for banning abortion in the late 19th C was about the formation of [all-male] physicians’ societies, who found it in their interest to squeeze out midwife practice in favor of their new “ob-gyn” specialty: for the previous 250 yrs, midwives had been the ones to handle all female reproductive medical issues.
Fast forward to Roe v Wade: we had 49 yrs of abortion on demand up to viability, roughly 24 wks, before shut down by Dobbs decision. So: total of 300 yrs of abortion on demand up to 24-25 wks’ gestation, out of 400 yrs since Mayflower landing.
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Well I sure hope that state is ready to support all those babies. They wanted them, now pay for them.
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https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10232460774369082&set=a.1200477179262
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Cee,
Greg Abbott won’t do anything for those babies. Texas believes in rugged individualism.
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“11% of rape victims are raped by their fathers or stepfathers; another 16% are raped by other relatives. 70% of incarcerated sexual abusers knew their victims. 40% said their victim was a child; 80% reported that the victim was under age 18.” — Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault
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I despair.
I mean, I’m familiar with these numbers, but still. And now to have no recourse to end a pregnancy that may result?
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The long-term effects of forcing women to bear their rapist’s child will be devastating to both mother and child, not to mention society. A traumatized mother will likely have difficulty bonding with that child, leading to more trauma.
The Turnaway Study followed two sets of women, those who had had abortions and those who were denied, for 10 years. The women denied abortions had worse health, social and economic outcomes.
“The research team regularly interviewed each of nearly 1,000 women for five years and found those who’d been denied abortion experienced worse economic and mental health outcomes than the cohort that received care. And 95% of study participants who received an abortion said they made the right decision.” https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/05/15/1098347992/a-landmark-study-tracks-the-lasting-effect-of-having-an-abortion-or-being-denied
Gov. Greg Abbott does not care about what happens to these women and children at all. He will call for more prison funding for those unfortunate children who will fall through the cracks as they lead a life of despair.
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Eleanor,
Thank you for posting your information.
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The idea that a woman or teenager is forced to bear her rapist’s child is monstrous.
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Greg Abbott cares about Greg Abbott and pretends to care about the plutocrats who donate to him. That’s it. He’s a psychopath.
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