Statistics based on research by the Guttmacher Institute seem to indicate that legal abortions increased slightly in the United States in the first six months of 2023 compared with 2020. The assumption is that states with more permissive abortion laws absorbed patients traveling from states with more restrictive laws, and access to abortion pills increased.

Thus the feminist and progressive narrative that Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision last year created a “Handmaiden’s Tale” hellscape where women were compelled to give birth to children they did not want was, as those inclined to be rational realized, inflammatory propaganda designed to support unhinged attacks on the six Justices in the Dobbs majority. The lie also proved to be a useful Democratic Party election weapon.

As Justice Alito stated clearly in his opinion, the ruling over-turning Roe v. Wade was not a pro- or anti-abortion ruling, but a necessary decision to uphold core Constitutional principles while striking down a badly reasoned precedent. The Constitution does not include a right to abortion, and the Founders would have been horrified at the very thought. Nor is abortion a proper matter for a national law, other than a Constitutional amendment.

I believe that, like slavery, abortion is an ethical and moral monstrosity that will eventually be recognized as such, but it is still up to citizens and advocates of one position or the other to come to an ethical solution, which almost certainly will have to balance interests and values. The Supreme Court in Roe foolishly and improperly blocked that process, and Dobbs, wisely and necessarily, restored it. Dobbs did not, as the feminist, progressive and Democratic Big Lie maintained, stop women from having abortions, as the statistics demonstrate. It may have prompted earlier abortions, which, depending on one’s view of when a human life becomes a human live worthy of legal protection, can be viewed as a positive development. (I have not seen statistics on late term abortions.) It almost certainly made getting an abortion in some states more difficult, but ending a life should require more commitment than waking up and deciding, “I think I’ll abort my baby today.”

The statistics indicate that the Supreme Court majority was slandered by attacks claiming the Justices were hostile to women’s rights and interests and that Dobbs would lead to government mandated births, Their decision only elevated the interests of the unborn to equal status with those of their mothers, while restoring the Constitutional jurisdiction of states and the power of voters to decide a matter the founding document is silent on, imaginary “penumbras” notwithstanding.

Of course there will be no apology: those who continue to vilify the Court don’t respect facts, law and the Constitution any more than they respect the lives of the unborn. Nonetheless, it is difficult for them to claim Dobbs forced women to give birth when the evidence indicates otherwise.