Leading Pro-Life Group Admits No States Are Abortion-Free
Many conservative states passed new Pro-Life regulations after the overturn of Roe. While those laws largely closed brick-and-mortar abortion facilities, they left loopholes which allow for the ordering of abortion pills, not to mention other mechanisms for self-induced abortion.
Some Pro-Life groups have nevertheless asserted that these states are now abortion-free, and Pro-Life news outlets have even claimed that zero abortions are happening in these states.
But a new paper from the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research and education arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, recently indicated that Pro-Life laws are clearly failing to actually abolish abortion, even in the most soundly Republican and Pro-Life states in the country.
Pro-Life establishment organizations, including the Charlotte Lozier Institute and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, should therefore stop opposing equal protection of the laws for preborn babies, which would close the loopholes in Pro-Life laws they have now identified.
No States Are Abortion-Free
The report from the Charlotte Lozier Institute said that “pro-life laws are preventing brick-and-mortar abortions from occurring in pro-life states,” even as pro-abortion states are counteracting them and exposing “flaws in the construction of state pro-life laws.”
The advent of shield laws, which protect abortion providers from prosecutions in states with abortion restrictions, has enabled abortion in those states after Dobbs, as have many online-only abortion pill suppliers.
The pro-abortion states, in other words, have indeed “circumvented the inability of women in pro-life states to obtain brick-and-mortar abortions,” especially through abortion pills. The persistence of abortion in those conservative states led the Charlotte Lozier Institute to warn against reaching the conclusion that “states with pro-life laws in effect are now abortion-free.”
While some establishment Pro-Life organizations have celebrated state health department reports “claiming that zero abortions occurred in their respective states,” those reports consistently “fail to note that their state laws have not prevented abortions from occurring in their state via telehealth, that other states’ shield laws have allowed for telehealth abortions within their state lines, and that women are traveling out of state to obtain abortions.”
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America have themselves asserted that purported abortion bans have saved hundreds of thousands of lives while failing to mention abortion pills and travel to other states.
Pro-Life Laws Do Not Work
Between the latter parts of 2020 and 2023, there was a “definitive increase in abortions” within states that have enacted new Pro-Life regulations after the overturn of Roe. The report added that “pro-life state laws are not written in a way that makes every means of abortion illegal.”
The report specifically made clear that regulations in Pro-Life states prohibit “abortions performed at brick-and-mortar centers,” but do not ban the efforts of “women to obtain abortion drugs from abortionists in other states or travel to other states to obtain an abortion.”
Pro-Life leaders believed that “the Dobbs decision should have decreased” the total number of abortions, but their assumption did not account for the manner in which pro-abortion states “exposed and exploited loopholes in pro-life laws,” assisting the nationwide rise in abortions.
The report concluded that “abortion remains widely available and legal” even in states where “the media and many government officials want to have the public believe that no abortions are occurring within state lines,” a claim also made by a number of Pro-Life establishment groups. The act of legally murdering babies “is widely sought after and available for women” in every single state, including Pro-Life states controlled by Republicans.
Equal Protection Must Be Passed
The new paper from the Charlotte Lozier Institute was honest about the failure of Pro-Life regulations to end abortion after Dobbs. The report identified elevated abortion levels, loopholes in Pro-Life regulations, and other realities enabling abortion to continue even in states that claim to have banned abortion.
We at the Foundation to Abolish Abortion have been sounding the alarm since the overturn of Roe about the rise of self-induced abortion and the insufficiency of Pro-Life regulations to handle the matter. We published our first “Babies Unprotected” report in January 2024 and worked with Rescue Those for over a year to produce the “Abortion-Free” docuseries which was released in July 2024.
What was glaringly missing from the Charlotte Lozier Institute report was the admission that the loopholes keeping abortion legal for women should not be supported by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America or any other anti-abortion organization claiming to desire an end to abortion.
In a previous analysis, the Charlotte Lozier Institute boasted that Pro-Life states “exempt women from prosecution,” adding that the Pro-Life establishment has always “rejected the idea of prosecuting women for abortion.” The organization even referenced a letter signed by dozens of Pro-Life establishment groups, including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, in the spring of 2022 opposing any “measure seeking to criminalize or punish women” for having abortions, informing lawmakers that the groups “stand firmly opposed” to such penalties in legislation.
The irony is that the Charlotte Lozier Institute has correctly identified loopholes keeping abortion legal in conservative states, even as Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, their own parent organization, publicly advocates against passing laws that would end those exact loopholes.
As the paper was forced to admit, the strategy of merely regulating abortion has failed. The only way to effectively abolish abortion is to establish equal protection of the laws for preborn babies.
We must stop including legal carveouts that allow women or any other class of people to murder preborn babies under cover of law. Pro-Life establishment leaders, including those at the Charlotte Lozier Institute and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, should stop opposing efforts to close the loopholes and should instead work to make murdering anyone illegal for everyone.