In post-Roe America, more babies are dying in their first year of life.
New research published this week in the JAMA Pediatrics found that in the first 18 months since the Supreme Court's Dobbs vs. Jackson decision overturned the abortion precedent-setting Roe vs. Wade, the US saw an alarming uptick in infant mortality rates that exceeded expected figures by the hundreds.
The study, conducted by researchers at Ohio State University's College of Public Health, measured the US infant mortality rate — a figure that accounts for children who die before their first birthday — in the first year and a half since the end of Roe.
By the end of 2023, researchers found that six out of 18 months saw an infant mortality rate due to extreme congenital anatomical issues that was higher than in previous years.
Most concerningly, in three separate months — October 2022, March 2023, and April 2023 — the researchers found that the national average of instances of babies increased overall, to about seven percent higher than in previous months. That figure means that between those three months, an average of 247 more babies died than were expected. In those three months, according to the study, about 80 percent of babies died as the result of congenital anomalies like inborn heart and spine defects.
"This is evidence of a national ripple effect," study lead author Parvati Singh, an assistant professor of epidemiology at OSU's College of Public Health, told CNN, "regardless of state-level status."
Speaking to CNN, Singh was careful to reiterate that the study's findings represent the "tip of the iceberg," and that heightened mortality rates are likely stemming from a combination of factors. In many states, for example Louisiana, abortion bans have disrupted normal prenatal care and led to a degradation in comprehensive women's healthcare overall. Experts are also emphasizing that compounding socioeconomic factors, exacerbated by a lack of access to abortion and pregnancy care, are likely playing a role as well.
"The well-being of a pregnant person is inextricably linked to the well-being of the pregnancy," Ushma Upadhyay, an associate professor in the department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at the University of California, San Francisco who was not involved in the study, told CNN.
"People who face the most structural barriers in terms of poverty, lower levels of education, food insecurity, and other life stressors can't access abortion care," she added, "and these factors also increase their risks of poor pregnancy and birth outcome."
Even so, that 80 percent figure is staggering, and experts agree that many of these pregnancies — particularly cases where a fetus was shown to have severe and likely life-threatening abnormalities — likely wouldn't have been carried to term before Roe was overturned.
"Whether the pregnancy was wanted or unwanted, we know that many of these are pregnancies that would have ended in abortion had people had access to those services," Upadhyay told CNN.
The extremity of some of these congenital conditions can't be overstated. Johns Hopkins University demographer and perinatal epidemiologist Allison Gemmill, who wasn't involved in the new research but authored another recent study that measured an infant mortality spike in post-Roe Texas, told The Los Angeles Times that "prior to these abortion bans, people had the option to terminate if the fetus was found to have a severe congenital anomaly — we're talking about organs being outside of the body and other things that are very severe and not compatible with life."
It's a heartbreaking situation on every level. On the one hand, eroding women's healthcare is leading to higher-risk pregnancies and, per the research's implications, at-risk infants; elsewhere, at risk to their emotional and even physical health, women are carrying to term pregnancies they know are likely doomed, without the ability to choose. And children are losing their lives before their first birthday.
"These studies are providing a signal that people aren't getting the care that they need," Gemmill told CNN, "and because of that, there are spillover effects."
"It's never going to be the case that everybody's going to be able to overcome the barriers of these bans," she added.
More on infant mortality and abortion: Infant Mortality Spikes After Abortion Ban
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