I have to respond here as I seemingly the depth limit is reached.

As you've mentioned graphql you probably comparing ORM in that sense to an traditional custom API with backed by raw sql. In a fair comparison both version would do the exactly same, require the same essential tests. Assuming more variations for the raw sql version is just assuming it does more or somehow does it badly in terms of architecture. Which is not a fair comparison.

The orm represents deferred organization. Ie someone else is testing mapping and query generation for you.

An example is prisma. Prisma has a team og engineers that work on optimizing query generation and provide a simple and intuitive api.

Not using an orm forces you to take over that organization and test that extra complexity that goes into you code base.

It might be merited if you get substantiel performance boosts - but I have not seen any reasonably modern orm where performance is the issue.