AUSTIN, TX - JUNE 27: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott attends a press conference celebrating the U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows a Ten Commandments monument to stand outside the Texas State Capitol June 27, 2005 in Austin, Texas. A sharply divided Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of displaying the Ten Commandments on government land, but drew the line on displays inside courthouses, saying they violated the doctrine of separation of church and state. (Photo by Jana Birchum/Getty Images)
A study published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) estimated that since the reversal of Roe vs. Wade in 2022, there have been nearly 65,000 rape-related births in the 14 states that have outlawed abortion.
The leader of the group far and away is Texas, accounting for more than 26,000 of these births. Data was taken from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) for the study.
Only 9% of those pregnancies occurred in states with rape and incest exceptions to their abortion ban, while 91% occurred in states with no exception. Texas does not have an exception, and has, in fact, the strictest abortion ban in the country.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbot (R) signed S.B. 8 in 2021, which prohibits abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and allows any individual to sue healthcare workers or private citizens who provide or assist in attaining an abortion. Abortion is now entirely illegal in the state since a trigger ban that went into effect in 2022.
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Even in states with rape expectations, there have been fewer than ten legally provided in-state abortions a month. The paper uses this data to suggest that “rape exceptions fail to provide reasonable access to abortion for rape survivors.”
The Texas State Democratic Caucus issued a statement on the findings of this report. “These figures should outrage all of us,” the group wrote. “Women and girls across our state are enduring unwanted pregnancies, suffering from life-endangering medical complications in desired pregnancies, and fleeing the state for medical care.”
Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez (D) said, “No woman anywhere should be forced to carry their rapists’ baby. Politicians and un-elected judges should stay the hell out of women’s healthcare decisions.”
When the abortion ban was passed in Texas, Abbot was asked about how rape-related pregnancies would be addressed. He said, “Rape is a crime, and Texas will work hard to make sure we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas . . . so goal number one in Texas is to eliminate rape.”
Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki dismissed Abbot’s statement saying, “If Gov. Abbot has a means of eliminating all rape or all rapists from the United States, then there would be bipartisan support for that.”
There have been 211,119 rapes in Texas since the study was conducted, a staggering number for a crime that is historically underreported.
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