Study Estimates Rape Caused 65,000 Pregnancies In States With Abortion Bans

A study published Wednesday estimates that there have been nearly 65,000 rape-related pregnancies across the 14 states that banned abortion in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s crumbling 18 months ago.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of American Medicine, was led by Dr. Samuel Dickman, a Montana abortion provider and plaintiff in several lawsuits challenging the state’s abortion restrictions. Dickman’s team said the results of their study indicated that the four rape exceptions in place across those 14 states do not provide sufficient access to abortion.

“In this cross-sectional study, thousands of girls and women in states that banned abortion experienced rape-related pregnancy, but few (if any) obtained in-state abortions legally, suggesting that rape exceptions fail to provide reasonable access to abortion for survivors,” the study concluded.

Rape exceptions to total abortion bans are in place in Idaho, North Dakota, Indiana and West Virginia.

The study’s estimates “have limitations,” its authors cautioned, because “such highly stigmatized experiences are difficult to measure accurately in surveys.”

To arrive at a figure of 64,565 pregnancies caused by rape between July 1, 2022, and the start of this year, the researchers first used multiple government sources to estimate the number of vaginal rapes that occurred, landing at approximately 520,000. They then calculated that around 12.5% of those rapes resulted in pregnancy.

No more than 10 legal abortions during this time frame were reported in any of the 14 states with abortion bans.

“These are hard numbers to come up with — there’s no kind of systematic collection at the level of health care providers to be able to answer this question of what’s the