Debunking Elizabeth Warren’s Claim That 134 Women Impregnated By Rape Every Day In U.S.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and other Democrats continue to push false stories in order to claim the overturning of Roe v. Wade was a disaster.

On Thursday, Warren posted an article on X that claimed 134 women become pregnant due to rape every day in America while blaming former President Donald Trump.

“Every day, 134 women become pregnant by rape in states with total abortion bans, compelling many of them to carry forced pregnancies. It’s cruel beyond words,” Warren posted. “I want to be clear: Donald Trump did this.”

Every day, 134 women become pregnant by rape in states with total abortion bans, compelling many of them to carry forced pregnancies. It’s cruel beyond words.

I want to be clear: Donald Trump did this.https://t.co/aEiYbopqwS

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) October 17, 2024

The problem with the claim is that it’s not based on a real number. It’s an estimation that is arrived at by using multiple assumptions. The left-wing Center for American Progress (CAP) article Warren references in her tweet makes this clear, even though its headline declares: “Trump Proclaims ‘I Killed Roe v. Wade’ as 134 Rape-Induced Pregnancies Occur Daily in Abortion Ban States.”

The way they reach the absurd notion that 134 women are becoming pregnant through rape every day in states that have banned abortion is to take the number of reported rapes in those states and then find about 12% of the final number. The percentage was drawn from a separate study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that also estimated the lifetime risk of pregnancy amongst rape survivors to be 14.9%, but the study cited by CAP generously adjusted the number downward “to account for the difference between annual and lifetime rape-related pregnancy.”

They then divided the number by the number of months since the abortion laws took effect and then divided again by the number of days in the months. They added these numbers up for each state to arrive at 134 rape pregnancies a day.

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Even then, by CAP’s own admission, the number is too high since five of the 14 states included in the estimation include exceptions for rape. Those states were still included because fewer than 10 abortions have been performed in the state, so by CAP’s logic, this means it’s okay to add them to estimated rape figures.

If those five states weren’t included, the daily number would be 115, but that’s still misleading. The study cited by CAP estimated there were “519,981 survivors of completed rape” in the 4 to 18 months that abortion bans were in place in each of the 14 states. That study – which was published in JAMA Internal Medicine by leftist researchers at Planned Parenthood, Resound Research for Reproductive Health, two colleges, and a Massachusetts health care network – estimated that of those 519,981 reported rapes, 64,565 women became pregnant, or about 12%. CNN and other outlets reported this misleading statistic in January.

The notion of using reported rapes is also misleading since women face little to no consequences for falsely reporting rape, and just because something is reported doesn’t mean it has been proven true.

The study’s lead author, Dr. Samuel Dickman of Planned Parenthood, also told CAP: “According to the CDC data we used, the estimated lifetime risk of pregnancy among survivors of rape is 14.9%. Our analysis conservatively adjusted the figure for survivors of rape downward to account for the difference between annual and lifetime rape-related pregnancy rates.”

“The CDC data on rape incidence, on which we based our estimates, quantified the number of persons who reported rape over a 12-month period, which may involve multiple incidents during that time, e.g., in cases of rape by an intimate partner or family member, which represent the majority of rape incidents,” Dickman added, according to CAP.

Dickman said the study used “an annual risk of rape-related pregnancy of 12.4% among rape survivors” instead of the CDC’s 14.9% to arrive at its estimations.

So, no, 134 women are not becoming pregnant every day due to rape, it’s all based on hypothetical fearmongering.