The loss of nationwide abortion access following the reversal of Roe v. Wade has had deadly consequences – for children.
New research from Parvati Singh and Dr. Maria Gallo of Ohio State University, which was published recently in JAMA Pediatrics, shows that infant loss rose by 7% overall in the months following the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the landmark abortion ruling. In plain English: Hundreds more babies died in our post-Roe country, than were dying when Roe was still the law of the land.
“I’m not sure that people expected infant mortality rates to increase following Dobbs. It’s not necessarily what people were thinking about,” Gallo said to Ohio State News. “But when you restrict access to health care it can cause a broader impact on public health than can be foreseen.”
Infants with congenital health problems have been especially susceptible – likely because their parents were forced to carry non-viable pregnancies to term in restrictive areas. However, Singh noted to CNN, there is “evidence of a national ripple effect, regardless of state-level status.”
This isn’t the first research effort to link loss of abortion access to increased illness and death. For example, in Texas – one of America’s most restrictive states when it comes to abortion – experts discovered a 50% uptick in sepsis rates among women who lost second-trimester pregnancies. Patients suffering miscarriages were more likely to contract sepsis if doctors delayed or refused to perform a procedure to evacuate the uterus, researchers said.
And a previous study which had looked specifically at infant mortality rates in Texas yielded findings that align with the newer findings.
“These studies are providing a signal that people aren’t getting the care that they need, and because of that, there are spillover effects,” Dr. Alison Gemmill, the perinatal epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University who led that research effort, told CNN. “It’s never going to be the case that everybody’s going to be able to overcome the barriers of these bans.”
