Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, pretty much every awful thing we all predicted would happen has happened, or is starting to happen, and maternal mortality is sadly no exception. On Wednesday, the Gender Equity Policy Institute published a new report analyzing the CDC’s maternal mortality data from 2019 through 2023, which is the most recent full-year data set available. Per the report, mothers living in states that banned abortion are “nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after giving birth, compared to mothers living in supportive states where abortion was legal and accessible.” Black mothers, meanwhile, are 3.3 times more likely than white mothers to die in these states.
The same report found that—unsurprisingly—maternal health is improving in states where abortion care remains legal: Maternal mortality fell by 21% in those states in the first full year after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. In 2023, mothers’ risk of maternal death in Texas was 155% higher than in California. This reflects some of the early data we’ve already seen out of Texas, for example, where, since the state’s six-week abortion ban took effect in 2021, maternal deaths in the state increased by 56% from 2019 to 2022, compared to an 11% increase nationwide during the same time period. Based on the Gender Equity Policy Institute’s analysis, that 11% increase seems to stem from abortion-banned states, while maternal mortality actually decreased in states where abortion remains legal.
“The right to control if and when to have children is foundational to women’s freedom; it is globally recognized as a fundamental human right,” the report states. “The number of women in America who die in pregnancy, childbirth, and soon after giving birth is tragically high. … As this report has documented, women in states that banned abortion are at significantly higher risk of maternal death, and longstanding racial disparities in maternal mortality are significantly worse in banned states.”
The U.S. currently leads wealthier nations in maternal mortality. It certainly hasn’t helped that abortion bans have prompted health care providers and OBGYNs to leave states where they could face prison time for providing health care, or that the threat of prison causes hospitals and doctors to fear providing time-sensitive, life-saving, or stabilizing abortion care, leading to horrific pregnancy-related morbidities and even death.
The Gender Equity Policy Institute’s analysis comes just months after ProPublica reported on the deaths of five different women, three in Texas and two in Georgia, that were determined to be a direct result of the states’ abortion bans. Three of the women died after contracting sepsis because they were denied emergency abortions to safely complete dangerous miscarriages. Sepsis isn’t always fatal, but it is a leading cause of death in hospitals across the U.S., and people with nonviable pregnancies face a higher risk of sepsis the longer fetal tissue remains in their uterus. According to another ProPublica report from February, in Texas, ever since the state’s civilly enforced six-week abortion ban took effect in September 2021, the rate of sepsis among people who were hospitalized while losing a pregnancy in the second trimester surged by more than 50%.
The outlet also found that, since Texas banned abortion, dozens more pregnant and postpartum people died in hospitals than before the ban. Upon reviewing a trove of Texas hospital discharge data related to pregnancy from 2017 to 2023, ProPublica found in 2021, 67 patients who lost a pregnancy in the second trimester were diagnosed with sepsis; in 2022, 90 patients; and in 2023, 99. The outlet pointed to a yet unpublished study by the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston that found the rate of sepsis tripled in Texas after abortion was banned.
Abortion shouldn’t be banned, period. But on top of that, all of this should put to bed the fantasy that “exceptions” for the life of the pregnant person are in any way effective.
Perhaps the most chilling aspect of all of this is that we know this data is just the tip of the iceberg—and government maternal mortality review committees in abortion-banned states are going out of their way to suppress data from the first years since Dobbs. (I wonder why!) After the Gender Equity Policy Institute published data showing Texas’ maternal mortality rate increased by 56% from 2019 to 2022, Nancy L. Cohen, president of the organization, warned NBC News that their data—and ProPublica’s reporting on the first post-Dobbs deaths—are all a “harbinger” of additional outcomes that have yet to be reported.
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