Study finds no mortality link
A 2026 JAMA Network Open analysis discussed on social media found no relationship between abortion bans and maternal‑mortality rates at national or state levels; some posts noted maternal mortality declined in several states after Dobbs. The discussion has been shared across researchers and advocacy accounts as a challenge to simple causal narratives. (x.com)
A new JAMA Network Open paper looked at 12,993 pregnancy-associated deaths from 2018 through 2023 and did not find a statistically significant overall increase in mortality after states adopted complete or six-week abortion bans. The authors compared 14 ban states with 37 nonban jurisdictions, including Washington, District of Columbia. (jamanetwork.com) Pregnancy-associated mortality is a wide bucket that counts any death during pregnancy or within a year after it ends, no matter the cause. The paper also checked narrower buckets like pregnancy-related deaths and maternal deaths, and it still did not find a significant overall post-ban increase. (jamanetwork.com) The researchers used a synthetic control method, which works like building each ban state a statistical “twin” from states without bans and then asking whether the real state drifted away after the law changed. They used National Center for Health Statistics birth and death data and tracked outcomes quarter by quarter. (jamanetwork.com) The raw trend in the paper still was not “nothing changed.” Pregnancy-associated mortality fell 9.8% in nonban states, from 54.5 to 49.2 deaths per 100,000 live births, while ban states excluding Texas fell 2.4%, from 83.2 to 81.2, and Texas fell 3.3%, from 54.2 to 52.4. (jamanetwork.com) That gap is why the authors were careful with their wording. They said the early post-Dobbs period showed heterogeneous state estimates and short follow-up, which means the numbers moved differently from state to state and the window after the June 2022 Dobbs decision is still brief. (jamanetwork.com) This also does not settle the larger abortion-policy debate, because another major JAMA paper in February 2025 found that infant mortality rose in the 14 states that adopted complete or six-week bans. That study estimated 478 excess infant deaths and a 5.60% relative increase above expected levels. (jamanetwork.com) That infant-mortality study found larger increases among Black infants and in deaths tied to congenital anomalies, which fits the mechanism many researchers worried about after abortion bans took effect. Johns Hopkins, which summarized the work, said the same 14 states saw an estimated 22,180 additional live births above what would have been expected without the bans. (jamanetwork.com) (publichealth.jhu.edu) So the cleanest reading is narrower than either side’s slogans. The April 3, 2026 JAMA Network Open study says early post-Dobbs abortion bans were not linked to a statistically significant rise in pregnancy-associated mortality, but it does not show that bans improved maternal health, and it sits alongside other peer-reviewed work finding worse infant outcomes after bans. (jamanetwork.com 1) (jamanetwork.com 2)
