@lizstl13@mastodon.sdf.org

To be clear, this study, as they explicitly state, in no way directly counted pregnancies. This is simply an estimate made by taking the number of rape events and multiplying it by the typical background fertility rate.

So these are not actual numbers, simply an estimate. Here is the relevant text explaining this.

More importantly what this study intentionally ignores is that many of these women likely went out of state to get abortions. Meaning the actual number of pregnancies resulting from rape in these states is almost certainly far lower than the numbers stated here. In fact 10% of the numbers explicitly occured in states where they would legally be allowed abortions.

So yea these numbers are grossly inaccurate and they make it clear these are not “real” numbers.

To estimate rape-related pregnancies, we multiplied the state-level estimate of vaginal rapes by the fraction likely to result in pregnancy (eMethods in Supplement 1)6 and then adjusted for the number of months between July 1, 2022, and January 1, 2024, that a total abortion ban was in effect. We used Stata, version 16.1 (StataCorp), to analyze the BJS survey data and Microsoft Excel for other calculations.