Fewer Women are Having Legal Abortions

Here's what the numbers don't tell us.

Photo by Krists Luhaers on Unsplash

According to early data, there have been roughly 10,570 fewer legal abortions in the US since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and stripped abortion rights from American women, as compared to a similar period last year. If those numbers hold, that’s some 60,000 fewer abortions per year.

Abortion opponents are no doubt celebrating these figures. While it’s true that in the aggregate, anti-abortion laws do not result in lower abortion rates — many of the nations with the highest abortion rates worldwide are also those that outlaw the procedure, and many of the nations with the lowest rates have very liberal abortion laws — laws that restrict abortion and that are enforced do of course have the effect of decreasing the legal abortion rate, and of increasing the birth rate. They also tend to increase the clandestine abortion rate — in other words, of the roughly 10,500 abortions that on paper didn’t happen in the time since the Dobbs decision, some fraction almost surely did happen. They just happened off the books, with pills from out of the country or procured by a friend.

But some number, and probably a very large one, actually didn’t happen. Some number of women, probably a very large one, were forced by the state to continue pregnancies against their will, and most of those women will wind up giving birth to babies they did not believe themselves to be in a position to have or raise.

Some number of those women won’t wind up raising those babies, because they or their babies won’t make it — such is the reality of pregnancy in the United States, and most especially in the “pro-life” states that now outlaw abortion. The states that saw their abortion rates drop the most are the same ones that boast among the nation’s highest rates of infant and maternal mortality, not to mention child poverty.

So when you see those numbers — 10,000 fewer abortions — understand that there are lives behind those numbers that are suffering incalculable losses, and that those losses are much more difficult to quantify than abortion rates.

How many more children of moms just pulling themselves above water will wind up stuck in poverty because their mom was forced to continue an unintended pregnancy she knew she couldn’t manage?

How many women will stay stuck in abusive relationships, now tethered to violent men who have fathered their children? How many children will spend their childhoods being abused, too?

How many women will drop out of school and never achieve what they set out to, because a pregnancy interrupted their path?

How many books will never be written, pieces of art never created, inventions never dreamed up, because the women who would have created them were forced into a life they did not choose?

The things we can’t tally up:

The years spent mired in anxiety and depression.

The hours lost with children a woman does have, but already feels she isn’t spending enough time with.

The children who never reach their full potential because the state forced their mothers to go through with additional pregnancies.

The children neglected and abused because they were forced into adults who are not capable of carrying for them, or do not want to care for them, or do not know how to care for them.

The disabilities and injuries that too often come along with childbearing, and especially with multiple childbearing, and especially among women with poorer access to high-quality healthcare — who are, of course, the women who are the least likely to be able to get abortions when abortion is outlawed. By forcing women to give birth, we are consigning thousands to a life where sexual pleasure is curtailed, and where living in their bodies means living with pain or serious injury or the humiliation of incontinence. These are not small things, but they are things we force on mothers.

The years shaved off of women’s lives, and not just those lost by women who die in pregnancy and childbirth (although those, too). We know that each child a woman has can decrease her lifespan; we know that stress, too, shortens lives, and it’s hard to imagine a more stressful life event than an unintended and unwanted pregnancy in a state that criminalizes abortion.

The relationships never forged and partners never met.

The children never born, never welcomed with joy, and never raised in stability because their would-have-been mother was forced into motherhood before she was ready.

The intellectual pursuits never pursued, jobs never worked, money never saved.

The retirements pushed back, or never enjoyed at all, because school never completed or years out of the workforce meant the savings just wasn’t there.

These adverse outcomes won’t be felt equally. The women who are still getting abortions are those who can afford to travel for them — women with more resources, who are adults, who have the capacity and freedom to make their own medical decisions, who are less likely to be mired in poverty or a dysfunctional family life. It’s women who are already in the worst circumstances, in the states that offer them the least support, who are now being forced into pregnancy and childbearing. It’s the women and kids who were already living on the brink who are being pushed over it.

xx Jill