The first scientific studies that measure the consequences on the health of regressive policies against abortion in the United States begin to be published. Since in June 2022 the Supreme Court revoked the historic sentence of 1973 that consecrated the voluntary interruption of pregnancy as a constitutional right throughout the country – known as Roe v. Wade– It remains in the hands of the states to decide if they allow it, restrict it or prohibit it completely.
An investigation collected by the prestigious magazine Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) He studied the impact of the ruling confirms that infant mortality grew 5.6% in the country in the 18 months after the judicial decision, which translates into 478 deaths of babies more than was usual. Of 5.93 deaths per 1,000 newborns at 6.26.
In the United States, the mortality rate during the first year of life was in recent years, although it was higher than in other developed countries. To check if the trend changed with the restrictions, the scientists at the University of California Carnegie Melon (Pennsylvania) and Johns Hopkins (Maryland) collected the birth and death certificates from January 2012 to December 2023. They set out in 14 states with limitations (now there are two more), either with total prohibition or until six weeks of gestation, and saw that in nine of them the Baby rate that die had grown in relation to the expected if compared to the stage before the involution and other states without prohibitions.
On the radiography, Texas stands out, with an increase in mortality of 9.5%. This southern state has maintained the prohibition for a long time – he began in 2021 – and, being so large, it is more difficult to move by car to a center of another territory where he can legally abort, he interprets the study. Behind Texas is Kentucky (8.57%), Alabama (6.93%), Oklahoma (5.01%) and Arkansas (3.22%).
An unequal impact
But growth was not the same everywhere or for all babies. Mortality increased double, in percentage terms, among children who had developed anomalies during pregnancy (congenital) compared to those who did not. “Normally these malformations, sometimes incompatible with life, are detected in more advanced states of gestation than the six weeks in which some of these states allow us to abort. They are born but they end up dying, ”explains Silvia Aldavert, director of the Association of Sexual and Reproductive Rights on the first of these inequalities.
On the other hand, researchers confirm that abortion restrictions also exacerbate “racial inequality” when checking the “disproportionate impact” among non -Hispanic black. Mortality between these infants grew by 11%, compared to 5.1% among white children. Prohibit access to pregnancy interruption affected southern states much more. It is there where half of the black population resides, which already had a higher infant mortality than the rest. The World Health Organization (WHO) already warned in the summer of 2022 to limit access to abortion would have a “major impact on women in the poorest and most marginalized communities.”
“They are women who cannot afford, due to their most unfavorable socioeconomic situation, to move to be able to abort while the white classes of middle and high class are changing state to interrupt their pregnancy, as happened in Spain when he went to London,” says Aldavert , which ensures that the study is “essential to make visible what has been saying a lot of time from different areas.”
Moving to another territory is a modus operandi usual since the regressive policies were implemented, according to a report published a year ago by the Family Planning Society. The number of abortions has not fallen after the cutting over access but has been distributed differently: interruptions have practically disappeared in the states that have introduced prohibitions (both those that restrict it almost entirely and those that only allow aborting up to six weeks) while abortions have grown significantly in the territories in which it remains legal totally or with some limitations.
Graphics Raúl Sánchez.
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