“There’s only one explanation for this staggering difference in maternal mortality. All the research points to Texas’ abortion ban as the primary driver of this alarming increase,” Nancy L. Cohen, president of the GEPI, told NBC. Cohen added that Texas is likely “a harbinger of what’s to come in other states.”
GEPI’s findings come just days after ProPublica reported on the first two abortion ban-induced maternal deaths, both in Georgia, as state maternal mortality committees finally begin to assess the first post-Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health data. Tellingly, both women were Black women. They were also mothers to young children when they died in 2022, just weeks after Georgia’s six-week ban took effect. Across the country, Black patients are about three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white patients. In the first year after Roe was decided in 1973, the availability of dilation and curettage abortion procedures—which could have saved both Georgia women’s lives—reduced the rate of maternal deaths for women of color by 40%. Under Georgia’s current abortion ban, performing D&C procedures is a felony punishable with prison time.
The new maternal mortality data from Texas and two confirmed abortion ban-related deaths in Georgia are the heartbreakingly predictable consequences of the post-Dobbs legal landscape. Medical experts have long warned that surface-level exceptions to save the pregnant person’s life neglect to consider the urgent, time-sensitive reality of pregnancy-related complications. Earlier this month, the research organization ANSIRH (Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health) of the University of California, San Francisco, published a study of dozens of anecdotes from physicians about how abortion bans have impeded their ability to provide standard, life-saving medical care. Patients of color were disproportionately represented among the physicians’ jarring anecdotes.
In a statement, Dr. Daniel Grossman, the lead author of the ANSIRH study, stressed that abortion bans are incompatible with a functional medical system: “Instead of policy band aids or exceptions that don’t work, we need to repeal abortion bans so that clinicians can do the job they were trained for and provide high quality health care to their patients.”
In Texas, about two dozen women sued the state last year, arguing the medical emergency exception attached to the state abortion ban was too ambiguous, and that they nearly died as a result. Lead plaintiff Amanda Zurawski recounted almost dying of sepsis after being denied a timely emergency abortion for her nonviable, life-threatening pregnancy. Zurawski survived, but one of her fallopian tubes permanently closed as a result of the delayed abortion. Nonetheless, the Texas Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the women’s lawsuit in May.
The timing of this new data from Texas and findings from Georgia’s maternal mortality committee is also important. In their reporting last week, ProPublica stressed that most state maternal mortality committees operate on a two-year lag, so they’re only now beginning to work on maternal deaths that took place after Dobbs in 2022. As Cohen put it, the Texas maternal mortality data—and deaths of two Black mothers in Georgia—are all a “harbinger” of additional horrific outcomes that have yet to be reported.
