Abortion is proving to be one of the hot topics of the American election campaign. And therefore exactly two years after the Trumpian-led American supreme court’s decision to overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling, which sanctioned the right to abortion at a federal level, it is the most suitable time to take stock. And a study published in Jama Pediatrics has thought about it in recent days, analyzing how neonatal mortality has changed in Texas after the introduction of one of the most restrictive American laws on abortion, demonstrating a dramatic increase in deaths over the of the first year of life.
Texas is the perfect state to evaluate the health impact of changes in American jurisprudence regarding termination of pregnancy. In fact, he changed the legislation in an anti-abortion direction several months ahead of the Roe v. Wade ruling. And it introduced one of the strictest laws in the world, which makes abortion illegal after the sixth week of pregnancy (corresponding to the appearance of cardiac activity in the fetus) without exceptions, not even in the case of fetal malformations or pregnancies resulting from rape or violence. .
The new research analyzed the trend in neonatal mortality in the state of Texas, and in 28 other American states, between 2018 and 2022, creating a reference statistical average so as to be able to calculate the number of neonatal deaths expected in a given year. The results revealed that since September 1, 2021, the date the abortion ban came into force, deaths during the first year of life in Texas increased by almost 13% compared to the averages of previous years, with a boom of deaths caused by congenital anomalies which reached 22.9%. Furthermore, in the same period, in the rest of the United States, general neonatal mortality increased by only 1.8%, while that linked to congenital anomalies decreased by 3.1%.
“Before these new regulations, if an anomaly was detected, people had the ability to legally terminate their pregnancy until at least the 20th week of gestation, and sometimes even by the 22nd week,” said Alison Gemmill, a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg professor. School of Public Health and first author of the study. “Every infant death is tragic, but now to this pain we have added that of a pregnant person who knows they are carrying a fetus that is incompatible with life without being able to do anything about it, whereas previously they would have been able to choose whether to terminate or minus the pregnancy.”
Previous studies have also shown that in 2022, after the new Texas law went into effect, the nation had more than 16,000 more births than previous averages, and for the first time in 15 years, there was a significant increase in the number of pregnancies among minors. The results of the new study obviously need to be confirmed by further research. But they are indicative of the damage that the American crackdown on abortion rights can do, both in terms of women’s health and infant mortality. To get a clearer picture of the situation, all that remains is to wait for the next results of Gemmill’s research.
“Texas was the precursor to what awaits us now with Dobbs (the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, ed.),” concluded the researcher. “One of the things we’re doing as a next step, you can imagine, is looking at the Dobbs ruling and seeing what impact it had on infant mortality.”