Study finds no jump in pregnancy mortality

A new national study found no statistically significant jump in pregnancy-associated deaths in states that imposed abortion bans after Dobbs. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) Researchers used United States National Center for Health Statistics birth and mortality data from 2018 through 2023, covering 22,011,131 live births and 12,993 pregnancy-associated deaths. They compared 14 states with complete or six-week abortion bans against 37 states and the District of Columbia without bans. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) The main measure was pregnancy-associated mortality, which counts deaths during pregnancy or within one year after the end of pregnancy, including causes not directly tied to obstetric complications. The study also tracked narrower categories such as pregnancy-related mortality and maternal mortality, which usually count deaths during pregnancy or within 42 days tied to the pregnancy or its management. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) Death rates fell 9.8% in non-ban states, from 54.5 to 49.2 deaths per 100,000 live births. In ban states excluding Texas, the rate fell 2.4%, from 83.2 to 81.2, and in Texas it fell 3.3%, from 54.2 to 52.4. (contemporaryobgyn.net) The authors reported no statistically significant difference between ban and non-ban states over the study period, but they also found uneven patterns by race and state. In ban states excluding Texas, pregnancy-associated mortality rose descriptively among non-Hispanic Black people from 115.8 to 127.3 per 100,000 live births and among non-Hispanic Asian people from 18.3 to 37.6. (contemporaryobgyn.net) The paper arrives as abortion policy research is moving in different directions after the Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision ended the federal constitutional right to abortion. A separate study presented by the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine in February 2026 linked a higher number of state abortion restrictions from 2005 to 2023 with higher maternal death rates. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) (smfm.org) The broader United States maternal mortality picture remains severe even as recent national numbers improved. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 649 women died of maternal causes in 2024, after 669 in 2023, and the 2024 rate of 17.9 deaths per 100,000 live births was not significantly lower than 2023’s 18.6. (cdc.gov) Racial gaps also remain large in the federal data. In 2023, the maternal mortality rate for non-Hispanic Black women was 50.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, versus 14.5 for non-Hispanic White women, 12.4 for Hispanic women, and 10.7 for non-Hispanic Asian women. (cdc.gov) So the new study does not show a clear nationwide post-ban surge in pregnancy-associated mortality through 2023, but it also does not show a broad improvement in the states with bans. The next round of data will test whether these early post-Dobbs patterns hold as bans stay in place longer. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)