We are living in an antediluvian hellscape.
I can hardly believe this is America. Well, actually, I do believe it and it’s profoundly distressing:
More than 64,500 pregnancies have resulted from rape in the 14 states that banned abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned, with the vast majority occurring in states that don’t make exceptions for rape, researchers estimated today in a leading medical journal.
The big picture: The projection in JAMA Internal Medicine aims to shed light on the frequency of these pregnancies at a time when exceptions for rape loom large in abortion debates.
Researchers, led by the medical director at Planned Parenthood of Montana, say even states with bans that have exceptions for rape impose other requirements that make it difficult to access the procedure.
Rape victims have few options other than self-managed abortions, including by illegal methods or via pills obtained through the mail, or traveling out of state to where abortion is legal. As a result, many have to carry a pregnancy to term, the researchers wrote.
What they found: Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the FBI, researchers estimated that 519,981 rapes occurred in states with bans from July 2022 — in the immediate aftermath of Roe being overturned — through Jan. 1, 2024.
-Adjusting for the fraction of female victims ages 15 to 45 and the cases likely to result in a pregnancy, they projected 64,565 pregnancies resulted from rape during the four to 18 months various state bans were in effect.
-Nine out of 10 pregnancies were in states with no exceptions for rape victims, with 45% of those (26,313) in Texas. Missouri was next highest with 5,825.
-Idaho and Mississippi had the most pregnancies among the five states with exceptions for rape, with about 1,400 each.
Those poor people, many of them likely young girls.
Misogyny R Us. There can be no doubt about it.