United States: The Positive Impact of Pro-life Laws
The debate on abortion rages in the United States less than a year before the presidential election of November 2024, going so far as to divide the Republican Party. A study published in November 2023, tends to show an increase in births in states that have banned abortion after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision issued by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2022.
The new study by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is making waves in the United States. According to data collected by the CDC and published last November, “In the first six months of 2023, births rose by an average of 2.3 percent in states enforcing total abortion bans compared to a control group of states where abortion rights remained protected, amounting to approximately 32,000 additional annual births resulting from abortion bans.”
For Michael News, associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute (the research arm of SBA Pro-Life America), the conclusion of the CDC survey, commissioned by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, demonstrates once again that “pro-life laws have resulted in an increase in children being born.”
“The study found that effects ‘vary substantially across ban states, with much larger effects observed in states that are bordered by other ban states and hence have long travel distances to reach facilities that remain open.’ In Texas, for example, the study found a 5.1% increase in birth rates; and in Mississippi, there was a 4.4% increase.”
“These pro-life laws really do save lives,” rejoices Melanie Israel, analyst at the Heritage Foundation, who explains that the percentage increases are “babies who are going to have to have a birthday that they maybe wouldn’t have otherwise been able to have” in the absence of pro-life legislation and the 2022 Supreme Court decision.
A Decrease in Some States, Increases in Others
However, the pro-abortion nonprofit Society of Family Planning claims to have seen an increase in the number of abortions since the overturning of Roe v. Wade: “Compared to the average monthly number of abortions observed in the Pre-Dobbs period of April and May 2022, there were 2,200 cumulative more abortions than during the 12 months July 2022 to June 2023.”
Michael News acknowledged that “it is possible that we could see lives being saved in pro-life states, but abortion increases elsewhere.”
There is ongoing polarization of the political debate on the question of abortion. The topic remains at the heart of American politics. In Ohio, the Democrats won recent elections by focusing on the liberalization of abortion access while, at the federal level, Kamala Harris, the current vice-president, announced that she was going to tour the country to promote the “right” to abortion at the beginning of 2024.
(Sources : National Catholic Register/Catholic News Agency – FSSPX.Actualités)
Illustration : Photo 46355167 | Babies © Ababaka | Dreamstime.com
