Advertisement
A nationwide ban on abortion would increase maternal mortality in the United States by 24%, from 861 dying mothers to 1,071, according to a new study from the University of Colorado Boulder.
The CU Boulder researchers focused on how maternal mortality is affected by abortion, as data shows pregnancy carries a higher risk of death than abortion, the university said.
The investigation comes particularly timely after the settlement of the Roe v. Wade through the US Supreme Court last week, which triggered abortion bans in several states. In Colorado, the procedure remains legal because lawmakers this year enshrined the right to access abortion into state law.
Some Republicans in Congress are already discussing a bill banning abortion nationwide after 15 weeks.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 0.41 deaths for every 100,000 legal abortions from 2013 to 2018. In 2020, 861 women in the US were identified as having died of maternal causes, according to CDC data, compared to 754 in 2019. The maternal mortality rate was 23.8 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2020, the study found.
“The previous estimates were based on abortion rates, births and maternal mortality rates from five years ago,” said Amanda Stevenson, assistant professor of sociology at CU Boulder and lead author of the study. “Since then, abortions have increased, births have declined and maternal mortality has worsened.”
Stevenson and CU Boulder co-authors Leslie Root and Jane Menken estimated that in the first year after a nationwide abortion ban, maternal deaths would increase by 13%, from 861 to 969. In the years that followed, researchers estimated that maternal deaths would increase by 210 to over 1,070 – a 24% increase.
Maternal mortality figures are even more serious for blacks, whose expected increase in maternal mortality with all states banning abortion has risen from 18% to 39%.
“There is a robust network of Black research showing how we can better support Black pregnant people, who are at 2 to 3 times the risk of dying because of pregnancy compared to other groups,” Stevenson said.
In some states that already have high maternal mortality and moderate to high abortion rates, such as Florida and Georgia, maternal mortality increased by 29%, the researchers found.
Conversely, in states that have already made abortion access more difficult, such as Nebraska, Missouri and West Virginia, researchers expected little to no change.
The researchers pointed to 26 states where abortion bans are expected after the Supreme Court’s Roe inversion: Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Oklahoma, Arizona, Ohio, Texas, Montana, Tennessee, Louisiana, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Indiana , Alabama, Iowa , South Carolina, Arkansas, Nebraska, Kentucky, Idaho, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming, South Dakota, Missouri.
They estimated that if abortions were not legal in those states in 2020, there would have been 64 more maternal deaths.
To counteract these deaths, the researchers said, helping people in states where abortion is illegal to access reproductive medicine, investing in maternal health and tackling the inequalities that lead to “astronomically high maternal death rates” will help can help support pregnant people in the US
According to data from the Commonwealth Fund, the US has the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country. In 2018, the US had 17 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births — a ratio more than double that of most other high-income countries, Commonwealth Fund data shows. In the Netherlands, Norway and New Zealand, the maternal mortality rate was three per 100,000 or less, according to Commonwealth data.
“Our estimates show how we can prevent the post-Dobbs abortion bans from adding to what is already a tragic number of deaths from pregnancy in the United States,” Stevenson said. “Pregnancy shouldn’t kill people – in fact, in other rich countries it very rarely does.”
