Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision two and a half years ago, state abortion bans have restricted pregnant women’s access to emergency medical care. And as the predictable harms — up to and including death — come to light, some states are acting as if they want to hide them from the public.
Last week, ProPublica reported on Porsha Ngumezi, the third known Texas woman to have died under that state’s abortion ban. In June 2023, Ngumezi lost so much blood from miscarrying at 11 weeks that she needed two transfusions. The hospital delayed providing a procedure called dilation and curettage to clear the uterus, with doctors instead giving her a drug to stop the bleeding. She died of hemorrhaging three hours later. More than a dozen doctors who reviewed a summary of her case told ProPublica that Ngumezi’s death could have been averted with a D&C.
It seems leaks to the media are more important than urgent investigations of these women’s deaths.
The very next day, The Washington Post reported that Texas’ Maternal Mortality Review Committee (MMRC) wouldn’t examine any pregnancy-related deaths from 2022 and 2023, citing a backlog of cases on top of the two-year delay that is typical of such committees. That means Texas won’t investigate any deaths from the past two years that are potentially linked to abortion bans, like Ngumezi’s.
“In 2024, the committee provided recommendations based on findings from maternal deaths that occurred in 2020,” Jennifer Shuford, the state health commissioner, wrote in a September letter. “I am concerned that this means the committee’s recommendations to policy makers are still not based on the most recent case cohorts available.”
Maternal mortality committees review women’s deaths not to publicize individual cases but to make recommendations to prevent future harm. This refusal to review pregnancy-related deaths from the first post-Dobbs years means we may never have a full picture of the harm caused by an abortion ban in the second-most-populous state — one that has a long-standing crisis of women dying from pregnancy. An analysis published in September by the Gender Equity Policy Institute found that, from 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal deaths in Texas increased by 56%, compared with 11% nationwide. But rather than investigate, the state is essentially admitting that the bodies are piling up faster than the state can address them. Its solution is not to dedicate more time and effort — like, perhaps, increasing the size of the 23-member committee — but to simply brush these women’s lives under the rug and skip ahead to 2024.
Texas isn’t the only state engaging in this sordid interference. ProPublica has found at least five women who’ve died under abortion bans: three in Texas and two in Georgia. After the outlet reported that Georgia’s MMRC had determined the two deaths were preventable, state officials responded by firing all of its 32 members. The commissioner of Georgia’s Public Health Department wrote in a letter to members that because the department wasn’t able to figure out who shared confidential information with ProPublica, it was dismissing the whole committee and would seek applications for replacements. This ruthless move will undoubtedly delay the work of the committee, but it seems leaks to the media are more important than urgent investigations of these women’s deaths.
These recent moves from Georgia and Texas officials mirror efforts by anti-abortion organizations to downplay post-Dobbs pregnancy complications and deaths. These groups claim that abortion bans allow doctors to care for people whose health is at risk and thereby don’t endanger women. The partner PAC of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, for example, launched a $500,000 ad campaign in September trying to deflect blame for the two Georgia deaths and accusing Democrats of lying about the state’s law. “Georgia’s law, like pro-life laws in every other state, allows emergency care, miscarriage care and treatment for ectopic pregnancy,” SBA President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement. “There would be no confusion if abortion advocates were not spreading confusion.”
Unfortunately, things could get worse before they get better.
It’s gaslighting of the highest order: Conservatives are trying to convince people that they live in an unreality where these tragic deaths are the fault not of politicians who banned medical care, but rather of doctors who face imprisonment, huge fines and loss of their licenses. The reality, as documented by ProPublica and many others, is that health care providers and hospital administrators are increasingly delaying D&Cs in favor of waiting to see whether miscarriages resolve on their own. Last year, the Texas attorney general’s office even argued before the state Supreme Court that women denied abortions should sue their doctors, not the state officials enforcing the law. No ad campaign can rebut the fact that the fall of Roe v. Wade and the resulting abortion bans affected medical treatment and now more women are facing death.
Unfortunately, things could get worse before they get better. Lawmakers in Texas and other states are threatening to copy a Louisiana controlled substances law that makes it harder to dispense medications used to treat postpartum hemorrhaging because the drugs are also used for abortions. The law targets the medication the hospital gave to Ngumezi instead of a D&C, and experts warn it could kill even more women in childbirth.
And because of the lag time in how maternal mortality review committees work, it could be years until anyone knows the true toll of these laws. If and when more deaths are reported, we can expect anti-abortion activists and lawmakers to blame anyone but themselves.