ProPublica has come out with the latest in a series of articles that purports to show that the consequences of abortion bans result in harm or death for women. For this purpose, they’ve chosen to exploit the stories of young women from Texas and Georgia.
ProPublica uses anecdotes to argue that pro-life laws lead to higher maternal mortality
Live Action News has addressed the veracity (or lack thereof) of this story. Every step of the way, ProPublica attributes the missteps in Nevaeh Crain’s care to Texas’ pro-life law protecting preborn children from abortion after a heartbeat can be detected. She was pregnant and showed up to the ER, and later died of sepsis because (they seem to imply) the hospital did not abort her wanted baby.
This and previous ProPublica articles seek to push one narrative: laws that protect preborn babies result in the death of pregnant women because doctors can’t or won’t treat them. They state it in no uncertain terms: “[Death] is what many pregnant women are now facing in states with strict abortion bans, doctors and lawyers have told ProPublica.”
ProPublica quoted Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor emerita at George Washington University, as saying “Pregnant women have become essentially untouchables,” emphasizing that pro-life laws make pregnant women unsafe, should anything go wrong without abortion as an out.
But is this true? Is there an epidemic of pregnant women dying because they can’t get abortions? Is accepting a sick pregnant woman as a patient some kind of liability if abortion-on-demand is off the table?
The data tells a different story
Instead of accepting the media narrative alone, let’s look at data surrounding maternal mortality in other civilized Western countries.
Since the United States is not the only advanced Western democracy with abortion restrictions, and since we have good data on maternal mortality rates across developed countries, we should be able to make some objective, data-driven comparisons. To do this, we should be able to compare the maternal mortality across similarly developed countries with differing abortion restrictions, and thus determine whether the data supports ProPublica’s argument that countries with stricter abortion bans have higher maternal mortality rates.
In order to ensure apples-to-apples comparisons, I looked at the top 15 Western European countries by GDP. I chose these because of their medical systems and the availability of care, and as close to an economic comparison as the closest analogy to the United States. Additionally, I looked at their restrictions to abortion on demand, because heartbeat laws in American states limit abortion on demand.
Almost all European countries have exceptions for medical emergencies and the life of the mother. Every American state allows treating medical emergencies, such as ectopic pregnancies, as well as the life of the mother – even though induced abortion (the intentional killing of a preborn child) is not medically necessary. I correlated this with the World Health Organization (WHO)’s data on maternal mortality for 2020, the latest year available, and inserted this data into a chart.
Chart created by the author
Many of these European countries have had abortion on demand available since the 1970s or 1980s, but with restrictions as to how late into pregnancy abortion can be committed.
Instead of supporting ProPublica’s argument, the data seems to indicate the opposite. There is a loose correlation between more permissive abortion laws and an increase in maternal mortality.
It is worthwhile to note that Poland has the most restrictions on abortions, yet has the lowest rate of maternal mortality. The same was once true for Ireland, prior to the country’s legalization of abortion in 2019.
If any of the mothers featured in ProPublica’s articles had been in any of the European countries listed above, they would have faced similar restrictions had they asked for elective abortions. Most of the women had wanted pregnancies, but suffered medical complications.
There is no law in the United States or in the 15 European countries above that would have prevented them from receiving appropriate medical care.
Doctors in many European countries, in other words, seem to know how to take care of pregnant women who experience complications. The American doctors who failed these women somehow do not.
But whatever the reason, it has nothing to do with the availability of abortion, as the data clearly shows.
In fact, a 2021 study showed something similar, even to the surprise of the authors. The study spanned over 10 years in Mexico and showed no increase in maternal mortality correlated to restrictions on abortion, Live Action News has reported. This flies in the face of the pro-abortion logic that “clandestine, or illegal, or unsafe abortions” increase maternal deaths.
What actually caused these tragic deaths?
Medical malpractice is something that happens in every state, and in every country all over the world. In their maternal mortality series, Secular Pro Life notes that ProPublica appears to have selectively searched medical malpractice records in states with abortion bans in order to claim that the poor care received could have been prevented by abortion, rather than appropriate care. Live Action News noted this as well in a fact check, quoting ProPublica as admitting that its goal was “to fill gaps in knowledge about the consequences of abortion bans.”
ProPublica’s first story was about Amber Thurman in Georgia, who took legal abortion pills she was given at a facility in a nearby state, and experienced complications. The abortion pills had successfully ended the lives of her twins, but their remains had not yet been expelled from her body, and she required a D&C; this is legal to perform on a deceased baby in all 50 states. When she showed up to the hospital showing signs of sepsis, doctors waited 19 hours to perform a D&C, at which point she was far too sick, so they attempted a hysterectomy to save her life. Thurman died on the table. ProPublica called this a “preventable,” “abortion-related death.” Yet, this is misleading readers; the reason it is an abortion-related death is because her death was the results of a legal chemical abortion (which carries a black box warning for possible sepsis).
The second story involved Candi Miller in Georgia, who ordered abortion pills online from Aid Access for a self-managed abortion. She apparently experienced complications, but did not seek out medical care and reportedly did not even tell her husband of any complaints. There would have been no barrier to treating her medical emergency if she had gone to a hospital for complications. Instead, her husband went to check on her in the middle of the night and found her unresponsive.
As Live Action News also reported, more questions remain because Miller’s autopsy shows that her “immediate cause” of death was not even related to abortion. Instead, the report attributes her death to “Combined drug (Fentanyl, acetaminophen, diphenhydramine),” and also lists “drug toxicity under unknown circumstances,” and an “undetermined” manner of death. Foul play was not suspected.
Josseli Barnica, a Texas woman, was told when her waters broke prematurely that doctors had to wait until her baby’s heartbeat stopped before they treated her, even though nothing in Texas’ law requires this. Additionally, she was discharged from the hospital a mere eight hours after her baby died and labor was induced, even though she was still experiencing increasing heavy bleeding and tried to communicate this to her care team. Her care team failed to properly monitor her after her miscarried baby had died, and she later died of infection.
Nevaeh Crain, also in Texas, was seen in two different ERs, diagnosed with strep, and was discharged again and again despite abdominal pain while visibly pregnant along with worsening symptoms. She even screened positive for sepsis and was discharged while still actively septic. This was under the care of a doctor who had been investigated by the Texas Medical Board for similar malpractice – missing or inappropriately treating infections in other patients – which resulted in the board monitoring his medical practice. Crain died after another trip to the second hospital’s ER confirmed fetal demise — yet the attending doctor still delayed medical treatment for reasons that are not clear.
All of the doctors who reviewed Crain’s medical file for ProPublica criticized the fact that a septic patient was discharged and not immediately admitted for treatment.
ProPublica wants us to find abortion as the common thread in these stories, but what’s really clear is the obvious, appalling failure of these women’s doctors to provide the basic standard of care for their patients. Abortion was already the cause of the issue in two of these cases. In most of the cases, induced abortion was actually irrelevant, because their babies had already died.
Additionally, compared to the approximately tens of thousands of times pregnant women have sought care in Texas for miscarriages or pregnancy complications since the passage of the pro-life law, the stories that have come to light about women dying because they could not get care for one reason or another are, thankfully, very few.
The abortion restrictions in states such as Texas, Georgia, Idaho, and other states are no more strict than many European countries that also limit abortion. Looking at data from those European countries, we have no reason to believe that when states enact pro-life laws, it causes maternal mortality to increase. The facts simply do not support media outlets’ claims that restrictions on induced abortion harm women.
