Analysis finds pregnancy deaths increased by 56% in Texas after abortion ban passed in 2021

The number of Texas women who died during pregnancy, childbirth or shortly after giving birth rose sharply after the state’s 2021 abortion ban — far outpacing the slower rise in maternal mortality rates nationwide, a new study of federal public health data shows.

According to an analysis by the Gender Equity Policy Institute, Texas’ maternal mortality rate rose 56% from 2019 to 2022, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same period. The nonprofit research group combed through publicly available reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and shared the analysis exclusively with NBC News.

“There is only one explanation for this staggering difference in maternal mortality,” said Nancy L. Cohen, president of GEPI. “All research points to Texas’ abortion ban as the primary cause of this alarming increase.”

“I fear Texas is a harbinger of things to come in other states,” she said.

SB 8 effect

The Texas Legislature banned abortions as early as the fifth week of pregnancy in September 2021, nearly a year before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which protected the federal right to abortion, in June 2022.

At the time, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, praised the bill as a measure that would “ensure the life of every unborn child.”

Texas law currently prohibits all abortions except those to save the life of the mother.

The passage of Senate Bill 8 in Texas gave GEPI researchers an early look at how a near-total abortion ban—including in cases where the mother’s life was in danger—affected the health and safety of pregnant women.

Cohen’s team found that the effect of SB 8 was rapid and pronounced: Within a year, maternal mortality rose in all racial groups studied.

Among Hispanic women, the rate of maternal deaths during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after increased from 14.5 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2019 to 18.9 in 2022. Rates among white women nearly doubled — from 20 per 100,000 to 39.1. And for black women, who are historically more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after, rates increased from 31.6 to 43.6 per 100,000 live births.

Even as overall maternal mortality has risen sharply during the pandemic, the number of women dying during pregnancy or childbirth in Texas has steadily increased since the abortion ban was enacted, according to data from the Gender Equity Policy Institute.

“If women are denied the right to abortion, more women will become pregnant and more women will be forced to carry their pregnancies to term,” Cohen said.

In addition to the immediate risks of pregnancy and childbirth, growing evidence suggests that women living in states with strict abortion laws, such as Texas, are significantly more likely to go without prenatal care and are significantly less likely to see an obstetrician-gynecologist.

Doctors say that expectant mothers experience fear.

“Fear is something I’ve never seen in practice before Senate Bill 8,” said Dr. Leah Tatum, an obstetrician-gynecologist in private practice in Austin, Texas. Tatum, who was not involved in the GEPI study, said requests for sterilization procedures among her patients doubled after the state’s abortion ban.

This means that women would rather lose the ability to have children than risk getting pregnant under SB 8.

“Patients feel like they have their backs against a wall,” Tatum said. “If they already knew they didn’t want to get pregnant, now they’re terrified.”

Tatum said she sees many women in their 30s and 40s who, although they would like to have a child, worry that they won’t have the option to end the pregnancy if it turns out the baby isn’t born healthy. “What happens if I give birth to a genetically abnormal fetus?” Tatum said her patients have asked her about that. They worry that their options are limited, she said.

“Treated like a criminal”

This unimaginable tragedy happened to 37-year-old Kaitlyn Kash from Austin, Texas.

Kash’s pregnancy was going smoothly, giving birth to her first child in 2018 – a healthy baby boy.

“It was so easy the first time,” she said. “Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought we would be on the journey we have.”

When she got pregnant again, it wasn’t until Kash’s second trimester, at 13 weeks, that she and her husband Cory discovered that their fetus had severe skeletal dysplasia, a rare genetic disorder that affects bone and cartilage growth. It was highly unlikely the baby would survive.

Kaitlyn Kash and her husband Cory at home with their two children.NBC News

“We were told his bones would break in the womb and he would suffocate at birth,” Kash said. “We expected our doctor to tell us how we would care for our baby, how we would end his pain.”

It was October 2021, just one month after Texas passed SB 8 abortion legislation.

“We were told we should get a second opinion, but we need to make sure it is obtained outside of Texas,” she said.

At 15 weeks pregnant, Kash was forced to travel to Kansas to terminate her doomed pregnancy. Outside the medical clinic, protesters harassed the grieving mother.

“I was treated like a criminal,” she said. “I was not given the dignity I deserved to say goodbye to my child.”

“This is another example of how heartbreaking it is to practice in the state of Texas,” Tatum said. “These patients are crying out for help. The state of Texas has failed women.”

ADJUSTMENT: (September 21, 2024, 8:17 a.m. ET) A previous version of this article incorrectly reported the demographic maternal mortality rate as a percentage rather than the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. It has been updated.