Editor's note: This story contains references to rape, pregnancy and abortion.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and removed federal protections on abortion rights in 2022, over a dozen states have enacted total bans on abortion. Now, new research suggests only a small fraction of people who become pregnant through rape are able to obtain a legal abortion in those states, including those with exceptions in place for such scenarios.
After analyzing multiple datasets, researchers estimated that between July 2022 and January 2024, nearly 65,000 people became pregnant through rape in the 14 states that have total abortion bans, according to a research letter published this week in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
The resulting estimate is likely conservative, said the authors, including Dr. Samuel Dickman of Planned Parenthood for Montana, which has advocated for broader access to abortion through legislation and in court. In comparison, researchers found that fewer than a dozen abortions each month were offered in states where lawmakers have offered rape exceptions for abortion access, suggesting that "rape exceptions fail to provide reasonable access to abortion for survivors."
The estimates and data strongly suggest that tens of thousands of people have become pregnant due to rape, Dr. Deborah Grady, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and a deputy editor for JAMA Internal Medicine, told the PBS NewsHour.
"It's a huge number," Grady said. "You could criticize the various datasets and the assumptions they made, but I truly believe they are in the right ballpark."
The authors acknowledged that their estimates "have several limitations," notably that "limited reliable information is available on rape victimization and rape-induced pregnancy, both of which are highly stigmatized life events."
Researchers relied on multiple datasets to generate that estimate. These included data from the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence survey from 2016 to 2017.
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The authors also made inferences from data that historically undercount incidents of rape, such as the Bureau of Justice Statistics' crime victimization survey conducted each year. According to a September report from the Justice Department bureau, 1 in 5 rapes were reported to police. Fear of reprisal, not wanting to get the offender in trouble or a belief that law enforcement would not help matters prevented most victims of rape from reporting what happened to them, the federal report said. Researchers also took into account how many female victims of rape were of reproductive age and compiled state-level data of vaginal rape.
Due to those complex factors, and because more precise head counts do not exist, the authors of the research letter needed to extrapolate their own estimate, Grady said. Along with fellow journal editors Dr. Sharon Inouye of Harvard Medical School and Dr. Mitchell Katz of NYC Health and Hospitals, Grady wrote in an accompanying editor's note, "While some states with very limited access to abortion allow an exception for rape, the very nature of rape may make it difficult for survivors of rape to take advantage of these exceptions."
"What's happening is that people who are experiencing rape are not being allowed to choose abortion," Grady told the NewsHour.