Many US women experience sexual violence, and many seek abortion for rape-related pregnancies. After the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, 14 states have passed abortion bans without exceptions for rape or incest. We estimated rape-related pregnancies by state to assess how abortion bans have impacted survivors of rape. We found that after Dobbs, 10 or fewer legal abortions occurred monthly in each of the total abortion ban states. 

In the 14 states that implemented total abortion bans following the Dobbs decision, we estimated that 519,981 survivors of rape experienced 64,565 rape-related pregnancies during the 4 to 18 months that bans were in effect. Of these, an estimated 5,586 rape-related pregnancies (9%) occurred in states with rape exceptions, and 58,979 (91%) in states with no exception, with 26,313 (45%) in Texas.

To estimate the contemporary incidence of rape nationally, we used data from the U.S. Center for Disease Control, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We used that data to model the instances of rape-related pregnancies using Stata and Microsoft Excel.

The large number of estimated rape-related pregnancies in abortion ban states compared with the 10 or fewer legal abortions per month occurring in each of those states indicates that persons who have been raped and become pregnant cannot access legal abortions in their home state, even in states with rape exceptions.