AUSTIN, Texas —
Claim:
“Millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion. In Texas, we work to save those lives.”
Result:
Misleading: The statement gives no context to the “millions.” A person could be left assuming incorrect data.
Sources:
Abigail R.A. Aiken, MD, MPH, PhD - Associate Professor of Public Affairs, Fellow of the Richter Chair in Global Health Policy and principal investigator with Project SANA
Joe Pojman, Ph.D., Executive Director, Texas Alliance for Life
Process:
Sept. 1 will be the first day Senate Bill 8, the Heartbeat Bill, will take effect.
It gives private citizens the ability to sue a clinic or individual who “aids or abets” an abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat.
When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill into law, he made a statement regarding the number of abortions.
“Millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion. In Texas, we work to save those lives,” a video Gov. Abbott posted on Twitter, May 19, showed.
A viewer reached out to our VERIFY team asking if it were true.
For this VERIFY, we chose to not cover when life begins. Instead, we focused on the number the governor said, “millions.”
“It depends where you're looking. If you're looking in the U.S. alone, they know there are about 800,000 abortions taking place in clinics in the U.S. every year. And that number has been declining since several years after Roe v. Wade was passed in '73. So it's been a long, slow decline. But if you're looking worldwide, then the answer would be yes,” Aiken said
The CDC tracks abortions across the U.S.
A study released November 2020 shows 619,591 abortions for 2018. The authors noted, “California, Maryland and New Hampshire did not submit abortion data.” Using data from Guttmacher Institute, the authors put the total closer to 800,000 abortions in the U.S. each year.
“I was at the event where the governor made that statement and I knew he had to be talking about the entire world, where there are many millions of unintended pregnancies and many millions of abortions that occur,” Pojman said.
The Guttmacher Institute estimates 73 million abortions take place each year.
Northern Africa and Western Asia have the highest abortion rate, the data shows.
“Much of the U.S. follows what Texas does in terms of our lawmaking … We believe that many nations follow what the U.S. does. So, really, it is very relevant to talk about worldwide statistics,” Pojman said.
The VERIFY team asked the governor’s office for context around the statement, but they would not respond.
If you have a question you’d like us to VERIFY, email us verify@kvue.com.
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