Time - Infant mortality and births increased in the majority of states that had abortion bans in the year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, according to two new studies. The studies, which were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Thursday, indicate that these impacts can be especially felt by people with socioeconomic disadvantages. Researchers said that the results “suggest that abortion bans may exacerbate racial disparities and disproportionately affect communities in southern states, where more than half of the U.S. Black population resides and infant mortality was already high.”
The investigators analyzed data from birth and death certificates, as well as the U.S. Census Bureau, for all 50 states and Washington, D.C. from January 2012 through December 2023 to compare data from previous years and the 18 months after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. One of the studies estimated that, overall, infant mortality was 5.6% higher than expected in states that enacted near-total abortion bans or bans after six weeks of pregnancy, resulting in about 478 more infant deaths than expected based on data from previous years. The other study estimated that, overall, the birth rate in those states was 1.7% higher than expected, amounting to about 22,000 more births than expected based on previous years’ data.
Fourteen states had enacted near-total or six-week abortion bans during the window that the researchers studied. As of mid-February 2025, 16 states have implemented such bans.
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