Infant mortality increased in the months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, leading to legislation across the country that drastically limited the accessibility of abortions with widespread reproductive health consequences.
In the 18 months following the Supreme Court decision rescinding the federal right to abortion in the Dobbs decision in June 2022, the infant mortality rate was 7% higher than expected, according to a study published in JAMA Pediatrics today. This corresponded to 247 excess deaths in three months studied — October 2022, March 2023, and April 2023. More than 80% of those deaths occurred in infants with congenital abnormalities.
As of this writing, 20 states have banned abortion or passed legislation that bans abortions within early gestational limits, and the majority of these states do not have exemptions for fetal anomalies. This pushes some pregnant people to give birth to babies with congenital anomalies and watch them die just after birth, when they may have elected for an abortion before to avoid such a traumatic experience.
Infant mortality was trending downward until 2022, when it increased for the first time in 20 years by 3%. Negative trends in maternal and infant health have coincided with legislation that restricts abortion access, and research has shown that infants die at higher rates in states with stricter abortion bans. A similar study also published in JAMA Pediatrics earlier this year found infant mortality rose by 13% in Texas after it banned abortions after six weeks in 2021. Also in that study, infant deaths caused by congenital abnormalities increased more than overall deaths.
“Whether the pregnancy was wanted or unwanted, we know that many of these are pregnancies that would have ended in abortion had people had access to those services,” Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, an associate professor in the department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at the University of California, San Francisco, told CNN.
