No, Texas maternal mortality didn’t “skyrocket” after heartbeat law
Under the “abortion rights” section of NBC’s website, they have “A dramatic rise in pregnant women dying in Texas after abortion ban.”
The article is a summary of an unpublished analysis from the Gender Equity Policy Insitute (GEPI). I searched their website and couldn’t find any recent reports related to Texas. I can’t look at their methodology or their results in detail, so I couldn’t say if their analysis makes sense. But it’s sort of a moot point, because even NBC’s overview description of the analysis makes no sense.
Authors Erika Edwards, Zinhle Essamuah and Jason Kane claim (emphasis added):
The number of women in Texas who died while pregnant, during labor or soon after childbirth skyrocketed following the state’s 2021 ban on abortion care.
A dramatic rise in pregnant women dying in Texas after abortion ban, NBC, 9/21/24
The Texas heartbeat law went into effect in September of 2021. So they’re claiming maternal deaths skyrocketed after September 2021. Right?
Then they write an article comparing Texas maternal deaths in 2022 to those in 2019.
Can you think of anything that may have affected maternal mortality happening between 2019 and 2022?
Here’s the data from their own article (arrows added):
According to the GEPI analysis, maternal mortality in Texas increased (red arrows) from 2019 to 2020 to 2021. For those of you who recall how time works, this is nearly all before the Texas heartbeat law went into effect in September 2021. What happened after the abortion ban? Texas maternal mortality substantially decreased (green arrows).
Even if we assume that there are no methodological issues with the GEPI analysis, it demostrates precisely the opposite of what NBC’s descriptions and headline suggest. Their headline should more accurately say “A dramatic decrease in maternal deaths after Texas abortion ban.”
Lyman Stone, a demographer and director of research for Demographic Intelligence, took a closer look at the data. He gathered data from the CDC WONDER’s Multiple Mortality Database 2018-2024. He used all deaths related to childbirth and pregnancy to ensure the broadest possible data set.
Stone excluded maternal deaths for women who had COVID when they died, and then compared maternal mortality in Texas to (pro-choice) Northeastern states. Here’s what he found:
Again, no “skyrocketing” in maternal deaths in Texas, as compared to other parts of the country, either after the Texas heartbeat law (September 2021) or after Dobbs (June 2022).
Some of this info in video form:
