A study published in the Journal of American Medicine found that between April 2022 and December 2022 there were 10,000 more babies born in the state of Texas than expected based on statistics from previous years. While Texas’s six-week abortion limit had been in effect since September 2021, Roe was not overturned until the end of June 2022 (there was a dispute about whether the state’s pre-Roe law immediately took effect, but a trigger-law protecting life from conception took effect at the end of August).

National Review’s editorial marking the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision had this to say about statistical analysis of pro-life progress: 

One year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court corrected its most grievous error of the 20th century.

For nearly five decades, the Court had forced states to abide by Roe v. Wade’s outrageous and obvious lie that the U.S. Constitution forbids almost any law that protects human beings from lethal violence in the womb. On June 24, 2022, the Dobbs majority got it right when it told the truth about Roe and restored the right of the American people and their duly elected representatives to protect the lives of all people.

The first birthday of Dobbs is something to celebrate not only because it ended Roe’s grotesque distortion of our Constitution but also because the laws that have taken effect after Dobbs have very likely already saved tens of thousands of human lives.

Analysts will debate the precise number of lives saved by post-Dobbs laws, and it is true that even the best estimates amount to a small decrease in the percentage of all abortions committed annually. But what shouldn’t be lost in any statistical discussion is that we are talking about unique human beings endowed by their creator with the unalienable right to life. Each life deliberately destroyed is an incalculable loss. Each life saved is priceless.