Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 29, 2024 / 14:10 pm
A highly publicized study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that estimated there have been 64,565 pregnancies resulting from rape in states with near-total abortion bans has raised questions about its methodology since its publication last week.
The study’s lead researcher was Planned Parenthood of Montana’s medical director, Dr. Samuel Dickman. According to the study, it was conducted “to assess how abortion bans affected survivors of rape.” Yet, the research did not use any data about rapes, pregnancies, or pregnancies from rapes collected during the times in which the pro-life laws were in effect.
“To our knowledge, no recent reliable state-level data on completed vaginal rapes … are available,” the authors explained.
The researchers instead used surveys from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2016 to 2017 to estimate how many rapes were likely to have occurred nationally since the abortion restrictions went into effect. They then used data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics to estimate what fraction of those survivors would likely be female victims between the ages of 15 and 45 at the national level.