If the U.S. Supreme Court makes such a decision, leaked draft opinionSays and strikes down Roe v. Wade, researchers expect that in the following year, roughly 75,000 people who want, but can’t get, abortions will give birth instead.
They’ll do so in a country where pregnancy and childbirth continue to become more dangerous.
This year’s government data showsThe number of maternal deaths in the United States increased dramatically in the first year after the pandemic. It went from 754 in 2019 and 861 in 2020, an 14% increase. Black women were almost at the top of the death rate. three times higherIt is different for white women.
The 2020 stats were not surprising. As ProPublica detailedIn 2017, the U.S. has fallen behind many wealthy countries and many less affluent countries, where childbirth-related deaths have declined in the past two decades. For measuring maternal health, deaths are only one indicator. For every U.S. mother who dies from childbirth or pregnancy, there are 70. suffer dangerous and sometimes life-threatening complications.
The landscape for maternal and child health after-RoeMany public health experts and officials claim that this would change quickly, and not for the worse. Some 25 states would likely move to ban abortionAccording to the Center for Reproductive Rights, it is. A brief in the case, signed by about 550 public-health and reproductive-health researchersThis graph shows a straight line between a lack of access to abortion and an increased risk of maternal mortality.
“Put simply,” the brief says, “women living in states with the most restrictive abortion policies — and thus the least abortion access — were found to be more likely to die while pregnant or shortly thereafter than women living in states with less restrictive abortion policies, regardless of state-to-state differences in poverty, race/ethnicity, and education.”
Middlebury College economics professor Caitlin Knowles Myers, whose work focuses the effects of limits on abortion access, said her research shows that in the year after the ruling, about 100,000 women seeking abortions won’t be able to get them from providers. Some women may be eligible to get pills for self managed abortions, but most will give birth.
These women are likely disproportionately poor and young of color. They are most concentrated in the Deep South and parts of the Midwest, as well as in some Western states. “Overwhelmingly, it is the poorest and most vulnerable women who are the most affected.”
Dr. Katy Kozhimannil, a health policy professor who directs the University of Minnesota’s Rural Health Research Center, said the loss of abortion access will be a compounding factor in rural communities where contraceptives are hard to get and hospitals have closed or no longer have obstetrics departments.
“I think we’re going to see a lot more emergency obstetric needs in rural communities that are not at all equipped to handle them,” she said.
Kozhimannil stated that many of the states with abortion trigger laws will have higher rural populations, as well as a higher percentage Black and Indigenous residents.
