65,000 Rape-Related Pregnancies in Anti-Choice States

They can't run from that number

One of the many lies that anti-abortion activists and legislators tell is that rape-related pregnancies are rare. It’s a claim designed to hide their utter cruelty, and to pivot when asked about abortion ban exceptions.

They’re not going to be able to hide from this number: 65,000. That’s the estimated number of rape-related pregnancies in anti-choice states since they passed abortion bans. 65,000. If you feel ill, you’re not alone.

The research, published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine, looked 14 states where abortion was banned, and used data from the CDC, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and FBI Uniform Crime Reports to come up with their estimate. One of the study’s authors, Dr. Samuel Dickman, a Montana abortion provider and researcher at the City University of New York, told NPR he was “horrified.”

“Sexual assault is incredibly common—I knew that in a general sense. But to be confronted with these estimates that are so high in states where there’s no meaningful abortion access? It’s hard to comprehend.”

It truly is, and I suspect this study will hit readers right in the gut. It’s going to make anti-choicers feel ill, too, though not because they have empathy for the victims.

There’s a reason that conservatives consistently downplay how many women and girls are raped: They know that Americans very much oppose sexual violence victims being forced into childbirth. Anti-abortion lawmakers and activists believe that if they pretend rape-related pregnancy—or rape, in general—is rare, they can hide their extremism.

But the truth is that these people don’t want anyone to be able to have an abortion, ever. Not if they’re a rape victim, not if they’re a child, not if their life is in danger. (Yes, even those who back ‘exceptions’; they know they’re not real.) That’s why Republicans’ only messaging recourse has been saying over and over again that cases like these almost never happen.

Some even claim that women can’t get pregnant from a rape. Students for Life president Kristan Hawkins, for example—who has been celebrated as the future of the anti-abortion movement—says that “sexual assault actually helps prevent a lot of pregnancies itself because of your body’s natural response.”

Now, we know anti-choice legislators and activists will continue to lie regardless of what science and facts say, but a study like this is going to make their life much more difficult.

Because they only have two choices: ignore the research and deny media requests, or confront the study head-on with more lies. The former makes them look weak, and the latter makes them look cruel. Because even lying about the study—or calling its veracity into question—still brings attention to the issue, reminding Americans that these groups don’t want sexual violence victims to have control over their own bodies.

It’s a lose-lose for them.

In the coming days, I expect Republicans and anti-choice groups will say that we can’t trust the numbers at all. After all, they’ve been sowing distrust in credible maternal mortality data, why not rape statistics, too? I’m also willing to bet it’s only a matter of time before one of them asks if those rape stats were based on ‘real’ rapes, continuing in the proud tradition of Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” remarks.

No matter what they say, though, we just need to respond over and over again with that number. 65,000. 65,000.