() – In the year and a half following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned the federal right to abortion, hundreds more infants died than expected in the United States, new research shows. The vast majority of those babies had congenital anomalies, or birth defects.
A previous investigation discovered that infant mortality soared in Texas after a 6-week abortion ban went into effect in 2021, and experts say new data suggests the impacts of bans and restrictions enacted by some states after the repeal of Dobbs have been large enough to affect broader trends.
“This is evidence of a national ripple effect, regardless of the situation at the state level,” said Dr. Parvati Singh, associate professor of Epidemiology at The Ohio State University College of Public Health and lead author of the new study.
In it new articlepublished on Monday in JAMA Pediatrics, Singh and co-author Dr. Maria Gallo, professor of Epidemiology and associate dean for Research at The Ohio State University College of Public Health, compared infant mortality rates in the 18 months following the Dobbs decision with trends historical.
Thus, they discovered that infant mortality was higher than usual in the United States in several months after the Dobbs decision and that it never fell to rates lower than expected.
In the months when infant mortality was higher than expected: October 2022, March 2023 and April 2023, rates were around 7% higher than usual, resulting in an average of 247 deaths children more in each of those months.
About 80% of those additional infant deaths could be attributed to birth defects, which were higher than expected in six of the 18 months after the Dobbs decision, according to the new research. Birth defects can range from mild to severe cases, and some of the most common types can affect the baby’s heart or spine. In some cases, babies with a birth defect can survive for only a few months.
“This is the tip of the iceberg,” Singh said. “Mortality is the end result of any disease. This is a very, very critical indicator. “It could be representative of the underlying morbidity and difficulties.”
Other research has found that births have increased in states with abortion bans, and experts say part of that increase is related to a disproportionate increase in the number of women carrying fetuses with lethal birth defects to term.
“Whether the pregnancy was intended or not, we know that many of these are pregnancies that would have ended in abortion if people had access to those services,” said Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, associate professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. She was not involved in the new study, but is researching abortion trends in the United States.
Experts say banning abortion can also affect access to broader healthcare, which can put both babies and mothers at greater risk.
“The well-being of a pregnant person is inextricably linked to the well-being of the pregnancy,” Upadhyay said. Banning abortion can affect access and willingness to seek prenatal care and broader support systems, she said, and the barriers are compounded.
“People who face more structural barriers in terms of poverty, lower levels of education, food insecurity, and other life stressors are unable to access abortion services, and these factors also increase their risks of poor outcomes.” in pregnancy and childbirth,” he said.
Infant mortality includes deaths that occur before the baby is one year old, so it is difficult to determine exactly what was happening during the months in which higher-than-expected rates were recorded, Singh said. But the timeline – four, nine and 10 months after Dobbs’ decision – roughly coincides with when congenital anomalies can be identified in the fetus and with a full term gestation.
“These studies provide a signal that people are not getting the care they need, and because of that, there are spillover effects,” said Dr. Alison Gemmill, a demographer and perinatal epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University who led the research that identified the link between increased infant mortality and abortion restrictions in Texas. “It will never be the case that everyone can overcome the barriers of these prohibitions.”
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