Infant mortality in Texas has risen 13% since abortion ban

Texas was one of the first states to outlaw abortion, thanks to a trigger law prohibiting abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detectable (at approximately five to six weeks). Nearly three years later, a study published by the journal JAMA Pediatrics has revealed the impact of the Texas law, which came into effect almost a year before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Between 2021 and 2022, infant deaths in Texas increased from 1,985 to 2,240, an increase of 12.9%, while the rest of the United States saw a rise of only 1.8%.

The statistics also noted that neonatal deaths due to congenital anomalies rose 22.9% in Texas, but declined 3.1% nationally. “This is pointing to a causal effect of the policy; we didn’t see this increase in infant deaths in other states,” lead author Alison Gemmill, assistant professor of population, family, and reproductive Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, told NBC News. “This might foreshadow what is happening in other states [...] Texas is basically a year ahead,” she added, explaining that the other U.S. states that banned abortion after the Supreme Court ruling could see a similar spike in infant mortality.

“I think these findings make clear the potentially devastating consequences that abortion bans can have,” said co-author Suzanne Bell, a fertility researcher.

Physicians have argued that the law is too restrictive for women facing pregnancy complications. Neonatal deaths are relatively rare, and the researchers were surprised by the results. While the study does not break down the numbers by race or socioeconomic groups, abortion bans are known to primarily affect vulnerable populations such as low-income families, African Americans, and the Latino community.

Tiffany Green, an economist and heath scientist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told CBS News that the findings were consistent with previous research on racial disparities in infant mortality rates due to state differences in Medicaid funding for abortions. Many of the people getting abortions are vulnerable to pregnancy complications, said Green, who was not part of the research.

Stephen Chasen, a specialist in maternal-fetal medicine who also did not participate in the study, told CBS News that abortion restrictions have serious implications for women with pregnancies with fetal anomalies, which require additional support, training and specialized medical care.

The researchers also spoke of the psychological and economic toll that a newborn death has on a family. And the trauma women experience when they carry a pregnancy to term, even though it is known that the baby is likely to die in its first weeks of life.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition