Researchers calculated the number of pregnancies resulting from rape in states where abortion was banned throughout pregnancy after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, total abortion bans went into effect in 14 states. Nine of these have no exceptions for rape. Now researchers have attempted to quantify the number of pregnancies that have resulted from rapes in states with a total ban—and the numbers they came up with are staggering.

A new study estimates that more than 64,000 pregnancies resulted from rape between July 1, 2022, and January 1, 2024, in states where abortion has been banned throughout pregnancy in all or most cases. Of these, just more than 5,500 are estimated to have occurred in states with rape exceptions—and nearly 59,000 are estimated for states without exceptions. The authors calculate that more than 26,000 rape-caused pregnancies may have taken place in Texas alone. The findings were published on Wednesday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

“Highly stigmatized life events are hard to measure. And many survivors of sexual violence do not want to disclose that they went through this incredibly stigmatizing traumatic life event,” says Samuel Dickman, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood of Montana, who led the study. “We will never know the true number of survivors of rape and sexual assault in the U.S.”