Despite What You May Have Heard, Pro-Life Laws Are Saving Lives

Pro-lifers hoped that Roe’s fall in 2022 would finally bring the end of abortion in America. So far, that has not happened. And some are even claiming that the number of abortions has increased. How can that be?

Some states have tried to protect unborn children and their mothers but others have expanded abortion access. Wealthy abortion funds paid to transport women to abortion-friendly states, while abortionists in “Shield Law” states mailed abortion pills into states where abortion was restricted, flouting their protective laws.

Abortion advocates argue their efforts to circumvent pro-life laws and pay for women to leave their states to have abortions elsewhere have largely defeated pro-life laws. They claim abortions continue rising because their money, political influence, and new delivery systems have kept the abortion industry thriving.

And there are even some, claiming to be part of the pro-life community, who agree. They say that abortion advocates have demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the new pro-life measures being put in place. They go so far as to insist that anything less than a full punitive ban prosecuting women as well as abortionists will not save lives.

These claims of abortion increases, however, rely heavily on questionable counting methods and estimates and assumptions that abortions occurred simply because abortion pills were sold or shipped.

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Evidence from multiple studies—including abortion-sympathetic sources—shows births increasing in states that enacted strong pro-life protections.

So, despite what you may have heard, pro-life laws are saving lives.

Replacing direct counts with uncertain estimates

Before the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe, two primary organizations tracked abortions in America: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Guttmacher Institute. The CDC relied on yearly state health department reports, while Guttmacher regularly surveyed abortion providers directly.

Guttmacher’s figures were generally considered more careful and far more complete. Its data showed abortions peaking at 1.6 million annually in 1990 before falling over the next two decades to 862,320 in 2017. The trend reversed at that point as more and more abortions were done with mifepristone, the abortifacient pill approved in 2000. The numbers again approached one million annually by the time of Dobbs.

After Dobbs, however, counting methods changed dramatically.

The Society of Family Planning (SFP), sampling its own membership, launched its own monthly “We Count” survey to measure abortion activity after the leak and release of the Dobbs decision. Extrapolating from these samples, SFP reported abortions falling in the months immediately after Dobbs but then rebounding. Their estimates attempted to count women traveling across state lines and used sales data on chemical abortions shipped to women into pro-life states to project abortion pill usage.

Facing pressure from SFP’s numbers, Guttmacher abandoned its older comprehensive provider survey. Instead, they began estimating monthly abortion totals using samples of abortionists they had worked with before, extrapolating from historical caseloads.

Using these less precise methods, Guttmacher estimated 1,053,650 abortions in 2023, 1,123,920 in 2024, and 1,126,470 in 2025–well above its last pre-Dobbs estimate of 930,160 abortions in 2020.

But these figures rely heavily on unproven assumptions.

In adopting this new methodology, Guttmacher was ignoring how Dobbs fundamentally altered the abortion landscape. Clinics closed, providers retired, some moved to different states. Others joined high volume mega-clinics with multiple abortionists or shifted to “telemedicine” or online abortion-pill operations. In such radically changed circumstances, historical caseloads become unreliable predictors.

As investment firms warn, “past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

The problem with abortion pill estimates

A major weakness in current abortion estimates involves mailed abortion pills.

Both Guttmacher and SFP use sales and shipment data from abortion-pill providers in “Shield Law” states to estimate abortions occurring in pro-life states. (“Shield Laws” supposedly “shield” abortionists in abortion-friendly states from prosecution for shipping abortion pills to women in states where these are not legal.)

But abortion pills sold are not necessarily abortion pills used or abortions completed.

For example, a woman may order pills but never use them. She may miscarry naturally before taking them. She may take the drugs but fail to abort, later undergoing another abortion procedure (potentially leading to double-counting). Some women, following the advice of some sellers, may purchase multiple pills simply to store for possible future use.

Others begin chemical abortions and then seek abortion-pill reversal (APR) treatment after regretting their decision. In those cases, the same pregnancy could be counted simultaneously as both an abortion and a live birth.

These situations clearly occur, but no one currently knows how often. Yet abortion advocates frequently treat pill sales and completed abortions as interchangeable, thereby inflating the counts.

Why higher numbers matter politically

Abortion advocates have strong political incentives to produce and promote rising abortion numbers.

Their message is that even strong pro-life laws cannot stop them because they have found clever ways around these legal restrictions. Their clearly intended message is these laws don’t work and that pro-lifers should stop trying.

Unfortunately, some pro-lifers seem to have accepted and repeated the pro-abortion narrative. As noted above, they claim any measures short of an absolute ban and the full prosecution of both women and their abortionists will be ineffective.

Beyond being extremely unpopular and impossible to pass or enforce, this would represent a dramatic break from the historic pro-life position. Pro-lifers historically have generally viewed women as abortion’s second victims and emphasized compassion, grace, and support rather than punishment. We believe this will save more lives in the long run.

Prosecuting women would also create enormous legal and practical problems. Distinguishing induced abortions from miscarriages would be extraordinarily difficult, while aggressive investigations would likely increase public sympathy for aborting women, the abortion industry and hostility toward the pro-life movement.

The evidence that lives are being saved

The strongest evidence that pro-life laws work comes not from industry abortion counts but from birth data.

Texas first showed increased births after early pro-life protections took effect before Dobbs. Since then, national studies have reinforced the same conclusion.

A major study published 4/15/25 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), authored by researchers generally sympathetic to abortion, found more than 22,000 “excess births” (births “above expectation”) in 2023 in states enforcing pro-life protections.

Other studies, such as one from the 3/11/26 issue of Economic Inquiry, obtained similar results. They showed a 1.6% increase in the overall birth rate in states with full protective laws.

This is critical. Abortions missing from these states totals do not merely reflect women traveling elsewhere for abortions or hidden chemical abortions “off the grid.” These are children being born who likely would have been aborted had legal conditions remained unchanged.

Even researchers critical of pro-life laws acknowledge that these policies resulted in thousands of additional births annually.

That means lives are being saved.

Challenges remain

In conclusion, abortion advocates continue working aggressively to undermine pro-life protections through interstate travel, telemedicine, and abortion-pill distribution. These efforts subvert state efforts to protect the unborn, but do not limit their effectiveness completely.

The answer, though, is not prosecuting women or making enforcement increasingly punitive. Such policies would almost surely backfire politically and morally.

More effective approaches target abortion providers directly. Measures such as the Abortion Pill Provider Liability Education (APPLE) Act would allow women harmed by abortion pills—or their families—to sue providers for damages involving physical injury, emotional trauma, or death.

Such policies place responsibility where it belongs: on abortion providers who promote and profit from these dangerous drugs and often minimize their risks.

The abortion industry will continue seeking ways around laws protecting unborn children. But even imperfect laws do make a difference. The evidence increasingly shows that pro-life protections save lives.

The numbers saved are smaller than we’d like, but there are thousands of babies alive today because of these laws. That is no small achievement.

LifeNews.com Note: Randall O’Bannon, Ph.D., is the director of education and research for the National Right to Life Committee.