Study Shows Maternal Mortality Decline in States Banning Abortions

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This week, JAMA Network Open published a study that analyzed the impact of recently enacted pro-life laws on maternal mortality rates. Overall, the results should please pro-lifers. The study found that maternal mortality rates are falling in both states with strong pro-life laws and states with permissive abortion policies. Since enacting its Heartbeat Law, Texas saw its maternal mortality rate drop by 2.4 percent. Other states with strong pro-life laws saw their maternal mortality rate drop by 3.3 percent.

The study was comprehensive and methodologically rigorous. The authors calculated quarterly maternal mortality rates for all 50 states and Washington, D.C., for the years between 2018 and 2023. Overall, they considered over 22 million births and over 12,000 pregnancy related deaths. When trends were held constant, states with strong pro-life laws on average actually experienced slightly faster declines in maternal mortality than states with permissive abortion policies.

Furthermore, the study compared maternal mortality rate trends in each of the 14 states that enacted either a Heartbeat law or an abortion ban to the cohort of states where abortion remained legal. The results were interesting. Not one of these 14 states experienced a maternal mortality rate increase that was statistically significant.

Since Dobbs, supporters of legal abortion have worked overtime to claim that pro-life laws have resulted in maternal mortality increases. They have amplified a Gender Equity Policy Institute analysis that was not peer reviewed and largely focused on a few datapoints from Texas. However, this analytically rigorous JAMA Network Open study which analyzed data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia provides strong evidence that pro-life laws do not increase the maternal mortality rate. Indeed, this study and data from countries like Poland show that pro-life laws are consistent with good public health.