center for reproductive rights
Under Texas GOP's Abortion Ban, Infant Deaths From Fetal Abnormalities Jumped 23%
"This is so cruel and pointless," said one advocate. "Texas and other 'pro-life' states force women to carry doomed pregnancies for months... only to watch their babies die."
By taking away from Texas residents the option of terminating a pregnancy in the case of a fetal abnormality when they passed Senate Bill 8 in 2021, Republican lawmakers in the state attained a "tragic" result, according to an analysis released Monday: The number of babies who died soon after birth from congenital conditions jumped by nearly 25% in just one year.
Overall, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the state's abortion law, which bans the procedure after just six weeks of pregnancy with no exception for fetal abnormalities, led to a 13% rise in Texas' infant mortality rate from 2021-2022.
More than 200 families in the state experienced the loss of an infant shortly after birth as a result of the ban, estimated the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics on the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade.
"Behind these numbers are people," Dr. Erika Werner, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Tufts Medical Center, who was not involved in the research, told NBC News. "For each of these pregnancies, that's a pregnant person who had to stay pregnant for an additional 20 weeks, carrying a pregnancy that they knew likely wouldn't result in a live newborn baby."
The number of infants in Texas who died in their first month of life rose by more than 10%, according to the study.
During the period examined by the researchers, infant mortality rose by about 2% nationwide. While the number of babies who died of congenital abnormalities in Texas jumped by nearly 23%, that number decreased by about 2% across the country.
"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.
Nan Strauss, a senior policy analyst of maternal health at the National Partnership for Women & Families, agreed with Gemmill's conclusion, saying the study found "an ironclad link between the change in the law and the terrible outcomes that they're seeing for infants and families."
"The women and families have to suffer through an excruciating later part of pregnancy, knowing that their baby is likely to die in the first weeks of life," Strauss told NBC.
The people affected by S.B. 8 include Samantha Casiano, who joined a lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights against the state's abortion ban. Casiano found out at 20 weeks pregnant that her baby had anencephaly and would not survive the condition. She was unable to travel out of state to get an abortion, and spent the last months of her pregnancy worrying "relentlessly about how she would afford a funeral for her daughter" while people "constantly" congratulated her. Her daughter died four hours after birth.
"Waking up every morning, knowing that your child is going to die and planning your child's funeral before your child's even here is insane, and it's unfair," Casiano toldNBC News on Monday. "There's just a lot of suffering there."
In the study published Monday, the research team analyzed death certificates in Texas and 28 other states from 2018-2022 to determine the impact of S.B. 8, building a model that calculated how many infant deaths would have occurred in Texas without the ban and comparing that number to the infant deaths that were recorded after the law was passed.
"Prior to this policy, if an anomaly was detected, people would have had the ability to legally terminate at least up to maybe about 20 weeks, or even maybe 22 weeks gestation," Gemmill toldThe Guardian. "Any infant death is tragic, but then layering on top of that, this pregnant person's situation where they know that they're carrying a fetus that is incompatible with life, whereas before, they maybe would have had the option to terminate."
Columnist Jill Filipovic said the study's findings were straightforward: "Women were forced by Texas law to have babies everyone knew would suffer and die."
"This is so cruel and pointless," said Filipovic. "Texas and other 'pro-life' states force women to carry doomed pregnancies for months, to field congratulations and questions about whether it's a boy or a girl, to go through the pain and risk of childbirth, only to watch their babies die."
Despite persistent claims by the Republican Party that abortion bans like S.B. 8 are "pro-life," said Healthcare Across Borders founder and executive director Jodi Jacobson, the study shows how the laws have already begun worsening infant mortality rates.
"We literally spent billions trying to address these very problems in low-income countries only to recreate them here," said Jacobson.
The study was released ahead of an expected ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Idaho and Moyle, et al. v. United States, which centers on whether states can enforce bans that conflict with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. The law requires hospitals that accept Medicare to provide treatment to any patient with an emergency medical condition, including people facing pregnancy complications who need abortions.
As US Backslides, French Celebrate Historic Abortion Protections
"France saw what happened in the U.S. and decided to do the RIGHT thing—enshrine abortion in its Constitution," said one advocacy group.
As U.S. President Joe Biden garnered fresh condemnation from rights advocates for his latest comments on abortion care on Monday, the Place du Trocadero in Paris was crowded with people celebrating an overwhelming vote by French lawmakers in favor of enshrining abortion rights in their country's constitution.
The French Parliament voted 780-72 to add an amendment to the constitution stating that there is a "guaranteed freedom" to obtain abortion care in France.
"The law determines the conditions by which is exercised the freedom of women to have recourse to an abortion, which is guaranteed," the amendment reads.
Demonstrating that the fight to protect abortion rights "has no borders," several legislators wore green scarves to the vote, symbolizing solidarity with the "Green Wave" that has seen advocates successfully push for reproductive freedom in Latin American countries.
The vote made France the first country to affirm a constitutional right to abortion care since 1974, when the former Yugoslavia amended its constitution.
The move was applauded by the United Nations high commissioner on human rights.
Abortion was first made legal in France—albeit without a constitutional right—in 1975, and the right is supported by more than 80% of the public.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said the two houses of Parliament sent "a message to all women: your body belongs to you."
French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti suggested the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning in 2022 of Roe v. Wade, which for nearly five decades had affirmed that people in the U.S. had the right to abortion care, made it clear that amending the French constitution was necessary to reflect the values of the vast majority of people in France.
“We now have irrefutable proof that no democracy, not even the largest of them all, is immune" to attacks on reproductive rights, he said.
The Eiffel Tower was emblazoned with the words, "My body, my choice" as supporters rallied in Paris to mark the historic vote—but across the Atlantic Ocean, an interview with Biden in The New Yorker included a comment in which the president, who has repeatedly said he has personal objections to abortion care but believes Roe should have been upheld, denigrated the idea embraced by the French lawmakers.
"I've never been supportive of, you know, 'It's my body, I can do what I want with it," Biden told the magazine, sparking renewed anger among reproductive justice advocates.
Biden's comments came weeks after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that a frozen embryo created via in vitro fertilization had the same rights as a living child, prompting some Republicans to attempt to distance themselves from the decision even as supporters of forced pregnancy and "fetal personhood" laws openly embraced it.
Nearly half of U.S. states now ban abortion care or restrict it earlier in pregnancy than the standard set by Roe v. Wade. At least 15 states ban the procedure in "almost all circumstances," according toThe New York Times. Republicans have advocated for a nationwide 15-week abortion ban, and former President Donald Trump—now the presumptive GOP presidential nominee—reportedly supports a 16-week ban.
Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnes Callamard said the vote in France on Monday was "of huge significance given the rollback of this essential right around the world."
"The United States has shown how devastatingly dangerous and retrogressive it is to undermine abortion as a right," said Callamard. "In Europe, there are still countries such as Poland and Andorra, where access to abortion is highly restricted and where those fighting for this right face prosecution. Today's vote in France should pave the way for stronger protection of access to abortion elsewhere."
"Enshrining abortion in the constitution is a high-water mark for women's rights and a testament to years of tireless campaigning by so many," she added. "It sends a message of hope and solidarity to women's groups and to all defenders of abortion and other sexual and reproductive rights."
After Texas Abortion Ruling, 'Make No Mistake—This Is the America the GOP Wants'
The case of a woman who had to flee Texas to get abortion care "has shown the world that abortion bans are dangerous for pregnant people," said one advocate.
The Texas Supreme Court's ruling late Monday, in which the all-Republican panel said Dallas resident Kate Cox could not obtain an abortion despite a lethal fetal diagnosis, did not stop the 31-year-old woman from getting care outside the state. But the ruling, said rights advocates on Tuesday, carries major implications for other Texans and people across the United States.
The state Supreme Court handed down a seven-page ruling saying that Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble was wrong to issue a temporary restraining order last week, which had barred the state from prosecuting Cox's physician for providing abortion care.
Cox learned earlier this month at about 20 weeks pregnant that her fetus had trisomy 18, a condition that results in miscarriage, stillbirth, or the death of a newborn in the days or weeks after birth.
Under Texas' near-total abortion ban, which ostensibly allows exceptions in cases in which an abortion is medically necessary to protect the pregnant person's life or to prevent unspecified "substantial impairment," Cox's physician said she would have to carry the pregnancy and have a Caesarean section, which could have resulted in uterine rupture and threatened her future fertility.
Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed Gamble's ruling to the state Supreme Court, which said in its decision Monday: "A woman who meets the medical-necessity exception need not seek a court order to obtain an abortion. Under the law, it is a doctor who must decide that a woman is suffering from a life-threatening condition during a pregnancy, raising the necessity for an abortion to save her life or to prevent impairment of a major bodily function."
In other words, said Politico healthcare reporter Alice Miranda Ollstein, "the court views the lawsuit itself as evidence Cox does not qualify for relief from the state's ban."
The Republican justices, like the state abortion ban, did not provide guidance to help physicians determine situations in which they could provide abortion care without fearing prosecution and a potential life prison sentence.
Molly Duane, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) who has represented Cox in the case, said on Tuesday that Cox's ordeal offers the latest proof that so-called "exceptions" don't work, and it's dangerous to be pregnant in any state with an abortion ban."
"This ruling should enrage every Texan to their core. If Kate can't get an abortion in Texas, who can?" said Duane. "Doctors still don't know what the exception means, and the Texas Medical Board remains silent. If the highest court in Texas can't figure out what this law means, I'm not sure how a doctor could. Meanwhile, the lives of Texans hang in the balance.”
The court's ruling and its vague reasoning about co-called "exceptions" to abortion bans, said Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, represents "the America the GOP wants."
For many Texans, said Nancy Northrup, president and CEO of CRR, a pregnancy complication like Cox's "could be a death sentence" under the state's laws.
"Kate's case has shown the world that abortion bans are dangerous for pregnant people," Northup said. "She desperately wanted to be able to get care where she lives and recover at home surrounded by family. While Kate had the ability to leave the state, most people do not."
Meanwhile, said author and advocate Jessica Valenti, Republicans are still pushing for a nationwide 15-week abortion ban. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a major group that supports forced pregnancy, has said it will not endorse a 2024 GOP candidate who doesn't back the proposal.
"What if there was no other state to go to? What if instead of being forced to travel to a neighboring state—an already-impossible hurdle for many Americans—Cox had to travel to a nearby country?" wrote Valenti on Monday. "That is not some hyperbolic hypothetical: It's exactly what life would look like under Republicans' 15-week national ban. And we can't let voters forget it."