A study released Monday shows that after Texas banned abortion, the infant mortality rate increased and there were more deaths from birth defects.
The Johns Hopkins University analysis is the latest to find higher infant mortality rates in states with abortion restrictions.
Researchers looked at how many babies died before their first birthday after Texas adopted its abortion ban in September 2021. They compared infant deaths in Texas to those in 28 states, some also with restrictions. Researchers estimated that there were 216 more deaths than expected in Texas between March and December of the following year.
In Texas, the infant mortality rate in 2022 rose 8%, to 5.75 per 1,000 births, compared to a 2% increase in the rest of the United States, according to the study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
Among the causes of death, congenital malformations registered an increase of 23%, compared to a decrease of about 3% in the rest of the United States. Texas law blocks abortions after detection of cardiac activity in the embryo, which typically occurs at five or six weeks into pregnancy, long before tests are performed to detect fetal abnormalities.
“I think these results make clear the potentially devastating consequences that abortion restrictions can have,” said study co-author and fertility researcher Suzanne Bell.
Doctors have argued that the law is too restrictive on women facing pregnancy complications, although the state Supreme Court last month rejected a case seeking to weaken it.
Infant deaths are relatively rare, Bell said, so the team was a little surprised by the results. Because of the small number of cases, researchers couldn’t analyze the rates in different populations, for example, to see if they increased more in certain races or socioeconomic groups.
But the results didn’t surprise Tiffany Green, a University of Wisconsin-Madison economist and population health scientist who studies the consequences of racial inequalities on reproductive health. She said the results were consistent with previous research on racial disparities in infant mortality rates due to state differences in Medicaid funding of abortions. Many people who have abortions are vulnerable to pregnancy complications, said Green, who was not involved in the research.
Stephen Chasen, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Weill Cornell Medicine, noted that abortion restrictions have other consequences. Chasen, who was not involved in the research, said people who have pregnancies with fetal anomalies need extra support, education and specialized medical care for the mother and newborn, all of which requires resources.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.