Infants died at higher rates after abortion bans in the US, research shows

In the year and a half following the Supreme Court Dobbs decision that revoked the federal right to an abortion, hundreds more infants died than expected in the United States, new research shows. The vast majority of those infants had congenital anomalies, or birth defects.

In the year and a half following the Supreme Court Dobbs decision that revoked the federal right to an abortion, hundreds more infants died than expected in the United States, new research shows. The vast majority of those infants had congenital anomalies, or birth defects. Earlier research – spurred by a CNN investigative report - found that infant mortality spiked in Texas after a 6-week abortion ban took effect in 2021, and experts say the new data suggests that the impacts of the bans and restrictions enacted by some states post-Dobbs have been large enough to affect broader trends. “This is evidence of a national ripple effect, regardless of state-level status,” said Dr. Parvati Singh, an assistant professor of epidemiology with The Ohio State University College of Public Health and lead author of the new study. In the new paper, published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics, Singh and co-author Dr. Maria Gallo, a professor of epidemiology and associate dean of research with the Ohio State University College of Public Health, compared infant mortality rates for the 18 months following the Dobbs decision against historical trends. They found that infant mortality was higher than usual in the US in several months after the Dobbs decision and never dropped to rates that were lower than expected. In the months that infant mortality was higher than expected – October 2022, March 2023 and April 2023 – rates were about 7% higher than typical, leading to an average of 247 more infant deaths in each of those months.