Anyone who’s been hurt will know. When the wound becomes a heavy burden, keeping you from taking a step forward, your despair will disguise itself as understanding.
In the first 18 months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, most states with abortion bans saw a rise in infant deaths, new
In the first 18 months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, most states with abortion bans saw a rise in infant deaths, new research reveals.
Two studies, published Thursday in JAMA, show that states that enforced complete or near-total abortion bans after six weeks of pregnancy saw a 6% overall rise in infant death rates. That added up to 478 more infant deaths than expected based on previous trends.
Among non-Hispanic Black infants, the death rate rose 11%, according to a team led by Alison Gemmill of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.
Researchers noted an increase in babies born with fatal birth defects -- cases in which abortion was previously an option.
"The groups that are most likely to have children as a result of abortion bans are also individuals who are most likely, for a number of different reasons, to have higher rates of infant mortality," Alyssa Bilinski, a professor of health policy at Brown University who reviewed the findings told The New York Times.
Changes were concentrated in the South, the researchers found. Most of the increase was driven by Texas, which saw a 9.4% rise in infant deaths -- much higher than other states.
Texas had already implemented a strict abortion ban in 2021, months before the Dobbs decision.
"All but 94 of the additional 478 infant deaths were in Texas, which has a much larger population than any of the other states with bans," co-author Suzanne Bell, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told The Times.
Other states with notable increases included Kentucky, where infant deaths rose 8.6%; Alabama, with a 6.9% increase; and Oklahoma, with a 5.1% surge.
Researchers found that states with the bans also experienced a 1.7% higher-than-expected birthrate -- 22,180 more births than forecast by prior trends.
"It might seem like a 1.7% change in the fertility rate isn't a big deal, but it's actually a very big deal," Gemmill told The Times.
The increase was even larger than the 1.4% uptick in the birthrate during COVID.
While nine states with abortion bans saw rising infant death rates, five states did not.
In Louisiana, the rate did not change. Idaho, Missouri, West Virginia and Wisconsin saw decreases.
Researchers suspect this owed to the availability of expanded abortion access in nearby states like Illinois and Maryland.
Women unable to access abortion care tended to come from low-income communities and communities of color, where maternal and infant health risks are already higher, the study pointed out.
"What happens when you ban abortion is that you create enormous inequality in access to abortion," Caitlin Myers of Middlebury College, who studies similar abortion data but was not involved in the new research, told The Times.
Anti-abortion groups said the higher birthrate should be seen as a positive.
"All of these 'excess' children who were born would have been killed in induced abortions," said Dr. Donna Harrison, director of research at American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
"This means that anyone lamenting the results of this study isn't really concerned that these babies died; rather, they wish they would have been killed earlier: in the womb."
Researchers said their findings highlight a need for stronger maternal and child health policies in states with bans.
Bilinski, who wrote an editorial that accompanied the findings, said preventing infant deaths should be the an aim and "in many cases infant mortality is preventable."
"If we are in a world where more people who perhaps didn't plan to and didn't feel prepared to become parents are becoming parents," she said, "We should think about what it means to be supporting those families in a real and tangible way,"
More information
Planned Parenthood has more on where abortion is legal.
