About the abortion ban in the US

Important note: This ““research”” paper was inexpertly done; I am not a social science nor a medical scholar. Although I do frequently research about social science related topics, I do not have the prior specialized knowledge required to be seen or taken as the holder of unconditional, absolute truth. Discussing abortion, being in favor or against it, or any other topic with such complexity requires a minimal level of specialized understanding. Data can be manipulated, and people are more prone to research facts that will validate their already established opinion. Feel free to review the data and sources provided by me. I accept being rebutted, I am not a moron, but only if the arguments are also providing data. 

Statement A: The abortion ban in the US will kill more people. Multiple sources and different scholars confirm the same thing.

Evidence A: Two scholars, Alison Gemmill — PhD, MPH, a demographer and perinatal epidemiologist whose research aims to improve the health of women, birthing people, and their children — and Suzanne Bell — PhD ’18, MPH, studies fertility and related behaviors, examining patterns of contraceptive use, abortion, and infertility and factors that contribute to disparities — were interviewed about their study and how abortion bans unequally impact certain subgroups.

"The result, according to new research from associate professors in Population, Family and Reproductive Health Alison Gemmill and Suzanne Bell, was an increase in live births — but also infant deaths. The impacts were worse among certain populations: Black infants, for example, died at a rate 11% higher than would have been expected in the absence of bans. […]

Our original work looked at the impact of a specific Texas policy known as SB8, which was one of the first major abortion bans in the country. Because SB8 was implemented nearly a year before Dobbs, we were able to investigate the impacts of that policy first. We did that by conducting two separate analyses using birth and death certificate data. […]

The first analysis examined the change in live births after the policy was implemented, and the other looked at what happened to infant mortality. We found that S8 was associated with an almost additional 10,000 births in the state of Texas through December 2022, and an unexpected increase of about 13% in infant deaths. The rest of the U.S. didn’t experience that increase. There was also evidence to suggest that the increase in infant mortality was partly driven by an increase in congenital birth defects. […]

What did this new work tell you about infant mortality?

AG: In our earlier work in Texas, we found an increase in infant mortality. With this work, we wanted to know whether we would see a similar increase in other states following the Dobbs decision. Our paper shows a 6% increase in infant mortality among states with bans, corresponding to an additional 478 infant deaths above what we would have expected in the absence of these bans. […]” 

Source: The unequal impacts of abortion bans. (2025, march 12). 2025, 1st august, from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health website: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/the-unequal-impacts-of-abortion-bans

Evidence B: Senate Bill (SB) 8 is the Heartbeat Act from Texas Legislature which banned abortion and abortion care on September 1st, 2021.

According to NBC, “From 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56%, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same time period, according to an analysis by the Gender Equity Policy Institute. The nonprofit research group scoured publicly available reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and shared the analysis exclusively with NBC News.”

 

Source: EDWARDS, E.; ESSAMUAH, Z.; KANE, J. A dramatic rise in pregnant women dying in Texas after abortion ban. Disponível em: <https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/texas-abortion-ban-deaths-pregnant-women-sb8-analysis-rcna171631>. Acesso em: 3 ago. 2025.

Evidence C: “The new reporting shows that, after the state banned abortion, dozens more pregnant and postpartum women died in Texas hospitals than had in pre-pandemic years, which ProPublica used as a baseline to avoid COVID-19-related distortions. As the maternal mortality rate dropped nationally, ProPublica found, it rose substantially in Texas.”

Source: SUOZZO, A.; CHOU, S.; PRESSLER, L. Rates of pregnancy-related sepsis and deaths grow in Texas after abortion ban. The Texas Tribune, 20 fev. 2025.

Evidence D: “To compare maternal death rates (deaths during pregnancy, at birth, or within 42 days of birth) in states with abortion bans or restrictions to those without, we examined the most recent three years of data.7 We found that maternal death rates were 62 percent higher in 2020 in abortion-restriction states than in abortion-access states (28.8 vs. 17.8 per 100,000 births). Notably, across the three years presented in Exhibit 4, the maternal mortality rate was increasing nearly twice as fast in states with abortion restrictions.

Maternal deaths are high in the U.S. relative to other high-income countries, and there are significant inequities by race and ethnicity.8 In addition, for every major racial or ethnic group, maternal death rates are higher in abortion-restriction states compared to abortion-access states, including 20 percent higher among non-Hispanic Black people, 33 percent higher among non-Hispanic white people, and 31 percent higher among Hispanic people (Exhibit 5).

 

[…]

Compared with their counterparts in other states, women of reproductive age and birthing people in states with current or proposed abortion bans have more limited access to affordable health insurance coverage, worse health outcomes, and lower access to maternity care providers. Making abortion illegal risks widening these disparities, as states with already limited Medicaid maternity coverage and fewer maternity care resources lose providers who are reluctant to practice in states that they perceive as restricting their practice.15 The result is a deepening of fractures in the maternal health system and a compounding of inequities by race, ethnicity, and geography.”

Source: Eugene Declercq et al., The U.S. Maternal Health Divide: The Limited Maternal Health Services and Worse Outcomes of States Proposing New Abortion Restrictions (Commonwealth Fund, Dec. 2022). https://doi.org/10.26099/z7dz-8211.

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Statement B: Legalized abortion does not mean that no one will have it, that there will not be even one unsafe abortion; it means that fewer unsafe abortions will be performed because there will be a choice. It means that

a) everyone involved in the abortion, including the medical staff, won’t be penalized for participating in the abortion; 

b) that more people will have access to safe abortion/psychiatric treatment offered in abortion clinics. 

I’ll give an example regarding legal prohibition: Gun possession being illegal doesn’t mean that no one will die from gun violence; it means that fewer people will (for the access to these weapons will be more difficult than if they were legalized). Similarly, abortion being legal doesn’t mean no one will die from unsafe abortions, it means fewer will. It has been proven that more people die (including infants) in locations where abortion is illegal. This means that more people will die than prior to the abortion ban, because safe abortion is no longer an option for anyone.

Evidence A: Amanda Jean Stevenso, from the Department of Sociology and Institute of Behavioral Science from University of Colorado Boulder, states that she finds “that in the first year of ban, estimated pregnancy-related deaths would increase from 675 to 724 (49 additional deaths, 7% increase), and in subsequent years to 815 (140 additional deaths, 21% increase). Non-Hispanic Black women would experience the greatest increase in deaths (33% increase in subsequent years). Estimated pregnancy-related deaths would increase for all race/ethnicities examined. Denying all wanted induced abortions in US would increase pregnancy-related mortality substantially, even if unsafe abortion does not increase. […] Annual pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are estimated to increase if all wanted legal induced abortions are denied, even if women denied legal access to abortion do not resort to unsafe procedures. Both in terms of the number of additional deaths and in terms of the increase in risk, the additional mortality burden associated with an abortion ban is estimated to be greatest among non-Hispanic Black women, raising important health equity concerns. Black women already experience high levels of pregnancy-related mortality, so exposing more Black women to this risk because their wanted abortions are denied will exacerbate the disproportionate impact felt by this population.”

Source: Stevenson, A. J. (2021). The pregnancy-related mortality impact of a total abortion ban in the United States: A research note on increased deaths due to remaining pregnant. Demography, 58(6), 2019–2028. doi:10.1215/00703370-9585908. From PubMed, National Library of Medicine website: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10577877/.

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Furthermore, the fact that the arguments not were not extended beyond childbirth/conception — of an unwanted and unplanned baby from an unwanted and unexpected pregnancy — shows that this line of thought, this reasoning, prioritizes depriving pregnant people of their right to choose and making of the child a punishment for those who had unprotected sex (punishment that will, considering the US’s sociocultural context, fall entirely on the pregnant people, who in most cases are women) over the infant. I’m not even from the US, however, given that only US data is being brought into discussion, I will do the same — p.s.: it should be noted that I think it comes from an extreme levity, an acute lack of reflection, that the arguments have specific territorial boundaries and geographical scope, considering that a subject of such gravity concerns every human nation under the Sun.

“Childhood pregnancy is prevalent across the United States, especially within states that have enacted restrictive abortion bans. […] Childhood pregnancy rates vary greatly by state, but states in the South overwhelmingly have the highest rates of child pregnancy in the nation.8 A variety of factors influence high childhood pregnancy rates, including low education level and low income level.9 Children affected by abortion bans are more likely to be poor, young, and people of color, and many of these children are living in places where they do not have access to comprehensive health care or social support networks.10 […] Childhood pregnancy negatively impacts the health and well-being of young girls. Risk factors for childhood pregnancy include early marriage, peer pressure, lack of sex education, and experiences of CSA. 16 CHILD USA’s Social Science Department concluded in a literature review that 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 13 boys are likely to experience CSA, and that most CSA perpetrators are family members or acquaintances. 17 The 2016/2017 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey from the CDC reports that 49% of female rape victims experienced rape before the age of 18, and 35% of female rape victims were first victimized between 11- years-old and 17-years-old.18 Research suggests that children with a history of sexual abuse are twice as likely to become pregnant during childhood, and that children with a history of both sexual and physical abuse are nearly four times as likely to experience early pregnancy. 19 The experience of sexual abuse at a young age increases the risk of lasting trauma and has also been associated with adverse reproductive and pregnancy outcomes.2” 

Source: Bousquet, S. (2023). The Impact of Restrictive Abortion Policies on Children: How Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Decision Negatively Affects Youth. Recuperado de https://childusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Impact-of-Abortion-Bans-FINAL.pdf.

As stated by Lindsay A. Jacobsen, a demographer with more than 35 years of experience analyzing population trends and their implications for professional, policy, and media audiences, and former US vice-president, “Experiencing poverty in childhood has been shown to have lifelong consequences for health and earnings in adulthood. But nine of the 10 U.S. states with the highest child poverty rates are states that currently ban abortion.

Lack of sufficient nutritional food—especially at young ages—puts children at higher risk for health problems and difficulties with learning in school. But 11 of the 15 states with the highest levels of food insecurity among children ban abortion.”

Source: Jacobsen, L. A. (2022). States with abortion bans continue to rank among worst for child well-being. Recuperado 1o de agosto de 2025, de PRB website: https://www.prb.org/articles/states-with-abortion-bans-continue-to-rank-among-worst-for-child-well-being/.

It should also be noted that, as said by Faulkner et al, “Studying child maltreatment is inherently complex and requires a nuanced understanding of child welfare systems. Researchers planning to study the link between abortion restrictions and children maltreatment need to consider both how they will measure child maltreatment and how they will account for the complex relationship between poverty and neglect”. Therefore, although I believe there is a correlation between being forced into childbirth and abortion restrictions and children maltreatment, the subject is too complex and there is too little data about it for me to conclude with certainty that the latter is an outcome of the former, it would be far too simplistic and unreflective of me. 

“Less clear is whether the relationship between poverty and neglect is causal, and if it is, how poverty contributes to neglect (Berger & Waldfogel, 2011). Poverty may contribute both directly and indirectly to neglect (Pac et al., 2023). Families experiencing poverty may be unable to afford the food, clothing, medical care, housing and childcare their children need, and poverty may increase parental stress, which can adversely impact parenting behaviors. Poverty is also associated with other contributory factors, such as poor mental health, substance misuse, and domestic violence (Skinner et al., 2020), and poor families may experience heightened surveillance and scrutiny due to frequent interactions with social service providers and other mandated reporters (Dettlaff et al., 2020; Merritt, 2021). This may explain why poor children are over-represented among victims of maltreatment (Kim et al., 2018).”

When linking these two subjects, it is important for me to say that being forced into childbirth does not mean that the parents of the infant will be more likely to maltreat their child, but that one being born into a family not well-equipped for raising them will likely and directly impact their growth into adulthood and health, forcing them into a miserable life (as Jacobsen, 2022, pointed out).

“[…] research on the impact of abortion restrictions has the potential to create false and even harmful narratives about parents who were forced to give birth and the children they were not planning to bear. […]”

Source: Faulkner, M., Massey Combs, K., Dworsky, A. et al. Cautions About Research Linking Abortion Restrictions to Child Maltreatment. Child Adolesc Soc Work J 41, 659–665 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10560-024-00977-w.

Although Faulkner et al states that they “are not aware of any evidence that mothers who are forced to give birth due to abortion restrictions are more likely to abuse their “unwanted” children or that abortion restrictions are leading to a growing number of “unwanted” children entering foster care”, other Wilkinson & Bernard, 2024, states that “Not surprisingly, TRAP law¹ enactment and length of enforcement was concentrated in the South and Midwest. Overall, a majority (55%) of children placed in foster were White and the most common reason for foster care involvement was neglect (57%). When comparing states with TRAP laws to those without, they found an 11% increase in children being placed in foster care (IRR 1.11; 95% CI 1.01–1.25). This increase was driven by TRAP laws that were focused on the abortion clinic building requirements (IRR 1.13; 95% CI 1.02–1.25), which commonly lead to clinic closures and abrupt absence of abortion access within communities. When examining the reasons for foster care entry, the main reason driving this increase was housing inadequacy (IRR 1.21; 95% CI 1.11–1.32).

Examining the data by race and ethnicity of the children in foster care further exposes disparities. Both Black (IRR 1.15; 95% CI 1.05–1.28) and non-White children (IRR 1.15; 95% CI 1.02–1.30) had statistically significant more foster care entries after enactment of a TRAP law than White children. Similar to the overall sample, these changes were driven by TRAP laws that focused on building requirements. […] It is worth emphasizing that this study was powered to detect very small effect sizes.”

Source: Wilkinson, T. A., & Bernard, C. (2024). Abortion restrictions and the impact on families. JAMA Pediatrics, 178(1), 15–16. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.4735.

¹According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, “TRAP” (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws single out the medical practices of doctors who provide abortions and impose on them requirements that are different and more burdensome than those imposed on other medical practices. For example, some TRAP laws require that abortions be performed in far more complicated and expensive facilities than are necessary to ensure the provision of safe procedures, such as in ambulatory surgical facilities. Compliance with these requirements may require costly and unnecessary facility modifications, which may not even be feasible in existing facilities, or impose unnecessary staffing requirements that are expensive or impossible to meet. Another example is TRAP laws requiring that physicians who perform abortions have admitting privileges in a local hospital, a requirement that is not medically justified and severely reduces women’s access to abortion services.”

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When it comes to the endless moral discussion on whether abortion is murder of infants or not, it should be way more important to discuss whether bringing an infant into a miserable life as punishment for unprotected sex is torture or not.

The moral discussion here should also be, if one considers themselves pro-life, then why aren’t they vegan? Only human infants lives matter? The calves from which you steal the milk, the chicken that are maintained in torturing conditions, the crab that are burnt alive, do not deserve life too? Will pro-life people care for these infant after they are no longer inside the placenta just like they care for calves and crabs? Because that’s what it seems to happen.

And I’m not even going to talk about the how insensitive it is to treat human lives as mere percentage, as if deaths increasing even 1% is not something to worry about when it comes to people, living beings.

Update (15/08/2025): 

“The Guttmacher Institution reports that out of all women who have abortions each year, 50% of them had had at least one or more prior abortions (2007, Repeat Abortion, Repeat Unintended Pregnancy, Repeated and Misguided Government Policies | Guttmacher Institute). The most common number of additional abortions was between 1 and 3, with 8% going on to have 4+. This makes the rest of this part mostly math.

64,771,132 abortions between 1973 - 2024 (51 years)

yearly average -- 1,270,022 abortions per year

96.5% of that is -- 1,225,571 abortions for convenience reasons

Of those, 50% (612,785) are from women who had multiple other abortions.

According to the WHO, around 47,000 women die from unsafe abortions per year. Prior to the overturn of Roe v Wade, abortion was widely available through all 9 months of pregnancy -- yet, those women still chose to conduct unsafe abortions, which shows that those women would have made that choice regardless of clinical abortions being available or not.

Statistically, 50% (23,500) of those, had they succeeded and survived, would have gone on to have at least 1-3 more abortions in their lifetime. If they each only had 2 more, it would've resulted in a total of 70,500 abortions. And that's not even considering if they had 3 (or more), which would've brought that total up to 94,000. Even if the death rate from unsafe abortions doubled, or even tripled, from an abortion ban, this 50% math would still apply -- more lives would have in fact been lost if they had not died. Objectively, 47,000 deaths are better than 70,500 or 94,000+.”

For one to claim that abortion kills babies and that “lives are lost in an abortion” they first need to establish at what point of pregnancy the fetus begins to be considered a living being, i.e. whether it is from the moment the sperm fertilises the egg or if it is from the moment the fertilized egg starts to develop a part of the body/brain . For reasons that would otherwise make this discussion invalid, I disregard the fact that this person, like me, probably has no prior academic medical knowledge, because if they did, they would not have done what I did and would have explained the data in detail in addition to citing it — what I cannot do for I am not an expert. They would be able, for example, to give definitions of terminology utilised about what is pain in the medical point of view.

Articles that show evidence to whether fetuses are able to feel pain or not should not be taken as ground truth because there is also evidence that suggests otherwise. Moreover, both the articles that supports the idea that fetus do feel pain and those that don’t state that it is not possible to determine with absolute certainty. As of mentioned previously, both “sides” in this discussion can manipulate the data to ground their arguments.

When I ask why pro-lifers aren't vegans, I don't mean to imply that meat eaters and eating are murderers or that eating meat is inherently bad — especially since that's objectively not what I said at all; my question aims to ponder about which lives deserve to be lived and which are not, and who should be the one deciding that. It is unquestionable that all the swine and bovine meats in our plates used to be living beings that were fully born before being turned into dishes, but most people act like reaping these lives for to their own advantage isn’t murder. What I mean is: I do not see the same necessity to define if butchers or livestock farmers are serial killers, and I do not see the same conviction in wishing they were punished as I see when it comes to people who have had abortions.

“Humans have eaten meat and animal products since the beginning of time.” Human beings also have abortions since the beginning of time — they even kill their already born children if those are no longer wished for or needed. Not only that, humans also kill each other, eat human flesh, and rape, since the beginning of time. But this argument doesn’t matter to this discussion because it has nothing to do with whether the way of getting said meat is murder or not.

I am not against eating meat — again, never said I was — but I used it to argument that if one is murder, the other is too, and if one should be punished, the other should be too; and that, if there is an hierarchy to who deserves to live more, then it should be accepted it will be subjective and that some people will prefer those who are already born to those who are yet to be.

I would also like to know — I do not intend to debate this, I am really curious — how my argument was emotional. According to with our dear Wikipedia, “This kind of appeal to emotion is irrelevant to or distracting from the facts of the argument (a so-called "red herring") and encompasses several logical fallacies, including appeal to consequences, appeal to fear, appeal to flattery, appeal to pity, appeal to ridicule, appeal to spite, and wishful thinking.” In which category does my argument fits in? Maybe if I understand where I may have been mistaken, I can polish it to be better understood. I do not think I appealed to flattery, nor appealed to fear, much less appealed to ridicule, but I could be wrong.

“Let's say somebody rescues a cat, and unbeknownst to them, the cat is pregnant. Then suddenly a few days later, whoops! -- there's a litter of kittens! Now, instead of either caring for the kittens themselves, or giving them to a no-kill shelter/rescue for other people to adopt, they decide it would just be easier to snap their necks and toss them in the garbage. After all, going into a shelter, there's a chance they'd be adopted by an animal abuser, or develop health issues later in life. It's probably a mercy to just kill them before they get a chance to (maybe) experience any of that. That is literally what you are saying.”

a) If I killed the kittens it would be murder, for they were already born. It would be abortion, or an equivalent to abortion, if I gave the cat something that made her body excrete the fetuses without giving them a chance to continue developing.

b) I wouldn’t need to make this decision for the female cat, for they eat their own kittens if 1) they are in a dangerous situation, 2) in case the kitten is born with birth defect or disease, 3) do not have resources to raise the kittens, 4) the kittens are stillborn, and 5) if they do not recognize the litter as their own — male cats also eat their kittens if they want to establish dominance or to force the female cat to reproduce again.

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It is hard for me to discuss or rebuke this blog because the arguments are really disjointed. The OP did not once give their own definition of what is abortion, murder, being alive, who and what is in the category of living beings, what is a fetus, in which point of the gestation does a fetus become a living being, if the pregnant people deserve to die in detriment of giving birth — even if it could be prevented by abortion —, what they think should be done and what they think will happen after the giving birth — all the essential things to first say when one wishes to debate anything. They just skipped directly to "debunk" random, jumbled, and artificially created² pro-choice arguments. 

² I borrowed this term from Linguistics. We utilise it to mean that a phrase wasn't extracted from a real-life context, but rather created to fit the announcer's purpose. It doesn't mean they aren't made by real people, but in this situation it was a made up quotation.