New York Senator: Abortion Bans Are Causing Women To Die – Consequences Of SCOTUS Dobbs Decision Having Impact On Maternal, Infant Mortality, Availability Of Care

Widely known as the Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court’s striking down of the Roe v. Wade decision that protected generations of women’s right to reproductive choice and freedom, this Court case has resulted in a patchwork and difficult to navigate laws and regulations – along with dishonest providers in various places.  It’s also having a chilling effect on maternity care in those states.

In states with abortion bans, training physicians seeking a residency and specialty (where they make a top five list of choices of what hospital to finish their training in and then are ‘matched’ to usually one or two choices where the school chose them) are not going into these states for OB/Gyn training.  This is the type of training needed to become a labor and delivery doctor, but no one wants to provide this care in those states where they can face 90 years in prison simply for assisting a woman with a miscarriage or to terminate a pregnancy where the fetus won’t survive.  The exceptions for abortions in these places exist on paper only, but no one can get them.

This latest decision is apparently cementing a legacy of lack of appropriate maternity care in the states with bans, coupled also with a lack in many of the same places of basic care for people at lower income levels, which most of them are because of the rurality of the state. So for instance, Texas and Louisiana were already on the highest end of maternal mortality and infant mortality rates.  Add in these bans and a lack of providers willing to assist in deliveries, and you have a quickly rising maternal and infant mortality rate, so it isn’t saving the babies either to have these laws.

There are also providers in certain states that are telling women they can provide abortions, but when they arrive after having driven for hours or booked a flight and hotel room and obtained childcare, they’re told it’s illegal there as well, sorry for the inconvenience.

One of the senators mentioned that before the Dobbs decision came down, the people of her state voted on an amendment guaranteeing healthcare freedom and choice for women and men across the state.  Still, the local government there attempted to resurrect a law from the 1800s banning abortion, but this was struck down in the courts.

However, even in states where abortion is legal, Medicaid reimbursement for abortion care on any level, at any time, and often for any reason has been restricted from Planned Parenthood centers across the country.  This has led dozens of such centers to close, which appears to have been the point.

However, Planned Parenthood centers perform abortions on 20% of the patients that come to their centers.  The other 80% receive basic medical care. Most of their care is legitimate and appropriate prenatal care, including exams and monitoring, such as ultrasounds, etc.  They also do STD (sexually transmitted disease) screenings, cervical cancer screenings and gynecological exams, along with breast cancer screenings and routine mammograms.

This SCOTUS decision and the laws it spawned has been devastating for female reproductive care across this country.  A large percentage of the people who come into those PP centers are low income women, and they cannot turn them away for lack of ability to pay, so they have had to make the difficult decision to close their doors.  This leaves women in many of those locations without a maternity care provider at all.  To say that again: there are no maternity care providers, the older ones are going to retire and there won’t be any new to replace them due to the restrictions.  So the maternity care desert issue will become more severe. This is because no one wants to practice this specialty in these states.

See  below for our interview with March of Dimes on their maternity care desert maps and information, which was held before any of these cuts had been signed into law or implemented. The situation was already dire.  See below for the CDC’s map of maternal mortality by state.  The states with the strictest abortion bans are also those with the highest maternal mortality BEFORE abortion was restricted:

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The situation is worsening in states like Tennessee and Louisiana, where women and infants are dying or having experiences where they’re lucky to have survived. And this problem is not getting better; it’s getting worse.  As more and more ‘Red’ states restrict access to abortion, it has a chilling effect on the practice of obstetrics in general and women’s reproductive care is suffering.  The very opposite of the stated goal of protecting unborn babies is what’s happening.

Unfortunately, though, for the most part much of the damage is invisible.  Except for a very few states, maternal death causes aren’t recorded, and infant mortality isn’t really tracked that well either – especially if it didn’t result in a birth certificate, such as with stillbirth. Such deaths are happening, but they’re not seen.  This means that the effects of Dobbs and the resulting regulations will be a ‘stories’ issue, where everyone knows someone who lost a baby when they didn’t have to, or died when modern technology would have saved them but no one was willing to provide it due to the looming threat of jail time, or when a woman who miscarries ends up hemorrhaging to death because a D&C was illegal in her state.

The list goes on and on.  It should be required that this data be recorded, but it might be a burden on these states.  However, they’re already burdening their female population by prioritizing the personhood of an unborn baby over the personhood and autonomy of the vessel for that baby – and other future babies.  When a woman’s life is valued, she can also go on to have more babies. Too many are having their lives cut short because the life inside of them is more important than their own – and women in these states will suffer more as this continues.

People don’t realize what it was like before the Dobbs decision. There were women dying while getting abortions because instead of prioritizing proper medical practice for providers – including licensing, hospital affiliation requirements, continuing education, and other practices that made women safer – their priority was controlling women and forcing them to have babies even when unsafe.

While many proponents of abortion focus on the bodily autonomy and personal choice and freedom aspects, the maternal and infant mortality issues, as well as lack of basic maternity care in those states, is much more pressing.  While complications are somewhat rare, that’s partly because most of the time you don’t hear about them because the doctor is able to apply modern techniques. The hands of physicians are being tied by politicians who have no knowledge or experience about pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period, nor do they consult with such experts.  Instead they make laws that are having a devastating effect on women across the country. Sanity is not prevailing on this issue.  Most Americans believe that government should stay out of reproductive decisions and that they should be between a woman, her doctor, and her family. That’s it.  No politicians or Supreme Court or anyone else.  Unfortunately, this is not all that those opposed to reproductive freedom want, and these senators have declared their intention to keep fighting until these rights are restored.

Banner Image: Hearing still.  Image Credit – US Senate