Roe V Wade: 64,000 women rape survivors made to carry pregnancies due to US abortion ban

More than 64,000 US rape survivors were pregnant in states that outlawed abortion after Roe v Wade was overturned, as per a recent study.

Researchers combed through numerous government records, including those held by the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and discovered that between July 1, 2022, and the beginning of this year, there were about 520,000 vaginal rapes in 14 states in the United States that forbade abortion. Of those rapes, about 12.5% resulted in pregnancy, according to Independent. 

“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,” they wrote in the study, published on Wednesday in the journal Jama.

During this 18-month period, just 10 legal abortions were reported in any of the 14 states (Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, and Louisiana) that had abortion laws.

“Few (if any)” of the women and girls who became pregnant because of rape “obtained in-state abortions legally, suggesting that rape exceptions fail to provide reasonable access to abortion for survivors,” researchers said.

Researchers warn that state legislation is further impeding women's and girls' ability to make decisions by taking away their reproductive autonomy across the United States.

When a survivor gets pregnant in a state where abortion is illegal, they have two options: either they fly hundreds of miles to a state where abortion is permitted, or they seek a self-managed abortion.

This leaves many women and girls without a viable choice to bring the pregnancy to term.

“In the 14 states that implemented total abortion bans following the Dobbs decision, we estimated that 519,981 completed rapes were associated with 64,565 pregnancies during the 4 to 18 months that bans were in effect,” they wrote.

“The large number of estimated rape-related pregnancies in abortion ban states compared with the 10 or fewer legal abortions per month occurring in each of those states indicates that women who have been raped and become pregnant cannot access legal abortions in their home state, even in states with rape exceptions,” researchers said.