This week marked the third anniversary of the landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court announced the 6-3 split, essentially returning the abortion issue to individual states.
In the years since, abortion laws across the country have changed. But, according to The Guttmacher Institute, the number of abortions in the United States has actually increased since 2020. And from 2023 and 2024, the number of abortions went up by about 1%.
If you take a quick look around, you are given the impression that women of childbearing age in the U.S. experience the worst kind of reproductive oppression. This is the narrative driven by a desperate abortion industry, its loudest proponents, and elected members of the Democratic Party.
The data clearly show that abortions not only continue to be performed in the U.S., but are performed at a steady rate. Even in states with outright bans, women aren’t barred from going elsewhere, as made evident by the 155,000 who traveled to another state in 2024 to obtain an abortion.
The leftist desire for an America under the strain of GOP-led subjugation doesn’t line up with reality. What is clearly evident, however, is the campaign of fearmongering, and its effects are deadly.
On May 31, 2024, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) experienced pushback from health professionals when seeking care for her ectopic pregnancy at a Florida hospital. The new abortion ban went into effect on May 1, 2024. It bans abortion after six weeks. But ectopic pregnancy did not and does not fall under the ban. Cammack’s condition included an embryo with no heartbeat and an immediate risk to her life. Treatment wouldn’t even qualify as an abortion. Still, she received a delay in care.
According to an exclusive piece at the Wall Street Journal about Cammack’s experience, “doctors and nurses who saw her said they were worried about losing their licenses or going to jail if they gave her drugs to end her pregnancy.” It wasn’t until hours later, long after Cammack tried to convince them of the legality, that they administered the appropriate drug for the situation.
Cammack “accuses the left of scaring medical professionals with messaging that stressed that they could face criminal charges for violating the law,” calling it “absolute fearmongering at its worst.” She is right to place the blame on them. Happily, Cammack and her husband are expecting again and are due in August.
Cammack’s experience isn’t the only one of its kind. Amber Thurman died of sepsis in Georgia in August 2022 when hospital staff waited 19 hours to perform a D&C after complications following a medication abortion. By the time they began, Thurman was past the point of saving. But doing so wouldn’t have been against the Georgia abortion ban at all.
In November 2022, another Georgia woman, Candi Miller, died for similar reasons: not receiving a D&C. The reason? Narratives on abortion legislation kept Miller from seeking care. In each of these cases, abortion bans were not to blame. Still, abortion proponents and organizations such as ProPublica insist that these bans harm women.
Cammack had the luxury of knowing the truth and insisting on the legal avenue of appropriate care. But not all women have that. It is the job of healthcare professionals to know, not just guess, what is legally allowed in these situations. It’s as if pushing an agenda and painting the Right as anti-woman is more important than the truth. Unfortunately, the lies are so widespread that they continue to dominate discussions surrounding reproductive care. And those lies have real-world consequences.
Abortion bans don’t hurt women. Overwhelmingly, those who muddy the waters in an effort to cast pro-life laws, politicians, and supporters in a bad light do the real harm.
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Overturning Roe and Casey brought an end to legal and moral wrongs. But as these three years have shown, dishonesty among abortion supporters runs rampant. Lies are a hallmark of the abortion industry, both pre-Dobbs and post-Dobbs.
The effort to play victim after losing Roe has only created more real victims: the innocent unborn who continue to be aborted, and the women who have been failed by a system that insists it will protect them.
Kimberly Ross (@SouthernKeeks) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog and a contributor to the Magnolia Tribune.