32,000 Babies Saved After Roe V. Wade Overturned: 'It's a Triumph'
A new study finds that more than 30,000 babies have been born that would have otherwise been aborted since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade.
The Institute of Labor Economics conducted a study that looked at the effects of the high court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
They found that 32,000 babies were born in states that have enacted some form of abortion restrictions.
"Our primary analysis indicates that 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," the study revealed.
The researchers noted that the high court decision sparked the "most profound transformation of the landscape of U.S. abortion access in 50 years," based on preliminary birth data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"Within hours of the decision, abortions were halted in 10 states, either in response to a ban triggered by the decision or to the expected enforcement of a pre-Roe abortion ban that was still on the books. Over the weeks and months that followed, the landscape of abortion access continued to shift as more states sought to enact and enforce abortion bans and as some of those bans were challenged in state courts," the study described.
It found that 23 percent of U.S. women of reproductive age have experienced an increase in driving distance to the nearest abortion facility, from an average of 43 miles one-way before Dobbs to 330 miles at present.
While the authors argue that the data suggests that these babies are born into families with less financial stability because there is less abortion access, Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, told the New York Times, "It's a triumph that pro-life policies result in lives saved."
"The insinuation of a lot of coverage of such data points is that it's a bad thing for there to be more children welcomed in states with better laws than in states that fast-track abortion," she said.
Rachel Hardeman, a professor of health and racial equity at the University of Minnesota, was not involved in the study but told CNN restrictive abortion access negatively impacted minority populations.
"[The Dobbs decision] has had a profound impact on birthing people's ability to decide what their family looks like and how they navigate that," she said. "All of the material resources necessary for a family to not just barely survive, but to thrive in our society are going to be impacted by their ability to access health care, broadly speaking, and abortion care, specifically."
The study found that the impact of the Supreme Court's landmark decision was "especially large" for Hispanic women and women ages 20 to 24 with results indicating that birth rates increased by an average of 4.7% and 3.3% respectively.
Alison Gemmill, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health told CNN the new study indicates that there is "an assault on reproductive autonomy."
"We don't always detect signals in these population aggregates because there's a lot of variation when you group everybody. The fact that there is a signal at the population level means that something's really going on. It's pretty strong evidence," she said.
Hawkins wrote in a post on X the study reveals the pro-life movement is making headway.
"Don't let anybody tell you that you can't make a difference in the world. Thanks to the Pro-Life Gen's dedication and sacrifice to the cause, all of those babies will have a chance at life, who otherwise wouldn't," she wrote. "Praise God!"
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