An academic study just confirmed that pro-life laws are actually pro-life.
The new numbers clearly show that the many state-level pro-life laws enacted since the Dobbs decision save the lives of about 32,000 unborn children across the county per year. They also increase states’ birth rates by an average of 2.3%.
The study, titled “The Effects of the Dobbs Decision on Fertility,” was published this month by the German research institute IZA Institute of Labor Economics.
According to The Daily Signal, the “research was conducted by economists at the Georgia Institute of Technology and at Middlebury College in Vermont” who “compared birthrates between states that restrict and allow abortion.”
“The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
sparked the most profound transformation of the landscape of abortion access in 50 years,” the researchers wrote. “The results indicate that states with abortion bans experienced an average increase in births of 2.3 percent relative to states where abortion was not restricted.”
The increase in the birth rate was “especially large for Hispanic women (4.7 percent) and women aged 20-24 (3.3 percent),” they continued. “The estimated increases were larger in states such as Mississippi (4.4 percent) and Texas (5.1 percent), where the geography of bans renders interstate travel more costly.”
The researchers indicated that all of this amounted “to approximately 32,000 additional annual births resulting from abortion bans.”
Furthermore, the researchers estimated “that roughly one-fifth to one-fourth of people [sic]* seeking abortions did not receive them due to” state-level pro-life laws.
*What kind of “people?” Women.
Therefore, the newly-released statistics run contrary to left-wing talking points from the Roe era which asserted that if pro-life laws were allowed to pass, they would not reduce abortion rates.
“We should celebrate these thousands of precious, irreplaceable lives who are with us today,” The Heritage Foundation’s Melanie Israel stated in reaction to the study. “Pro-life laws save lives, and policymakers at every level of government should continue building on the momentum to protect women and unborn children from the violence of abortion.”
