Just last week, the Society of Family Planning released its report on the impact of abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. The report claims that since the high court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson's Women's Health Organization, "millions of individuals across the country have faced increased, and sometimes insurmountable, obstacles to access their abortions."
Dr. Michael New of the Charlotte Lozier Institute tells AFN the information from the study is suspect because the Society didn't look at much data prior to the decision. As he points out, they only looked at two months: May and April 2022.
"So, they're not looking at the big set of pre-Dobbs data – and that's a concern," says New. "Secondly, they don't get every abortion facility. They impute data, [which] can cause error [and] can result in misleading information.
"And lastly, we just have very good birth data from various states which shows that births are going up after pro-life laws take effect and indicates lives are being saved."
The conclusion of SFP's new data is that abortions have increased and pro-life laws have saved few preborn lives. But New challenges that conclusion, pointing to two studies done on the Texas Heartbeat Act – one of which he authored.
"Both studies looked at Texas' birth data – birth data is reliable and births are easy to count – and both found that the Texas Heartbeat Act is saving roughly a thousand Texas children every month," he argues.
"[That's] very powerful evidence the Texas Heartbeat Act is saving lives. And when we get birth data from other states that passed pro-life laws early, I think that data will also show these pro-life laws are saving lives."
In a press release, New states that "downplaying the impact of pro-life laws has always been a long-term strategy of supporters of legal abortion and their allies in the mainstream media." He says that is why the alleged abortion increase has been "eagerly covered" by news outlets like The New York Times, CNN, The Hill, Axios, and The Guardian.
