New data shows that banning abortion would lead to more maternal deaths than previously thought, a critical finding less than a week after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to overturn Roe v. Wade.
According to new CU Boulder research based on newly available data from 2020, such a ban would increase maternal mortality by 24%, a 14% increase from the previous data from 2017.
In this study, researchers focused only on how maternal mortality is impacted by abortion simply because data shows staying pregnant carries a higher risk of death than having an abortion. The Centers for Disease Control reported 0.41 deaths per 100,000 legal abortions between 2013-18 and that the maternal mortality rate was 23.8 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2020.
Other factors, like how society will facilitate access to abortion for those living in states where it’s illegal or how criminalization will impact health care seeking, were not factored in.
“The prior estimates relied on abortion rates, births and maternal mortality rates as of five years ago. Since then, abortions have increased, births have decreased and maternal mortality rates have worsened,” said Amanda Stevenson, an assistant professor of sociology at CU Boulder and lead author of the paper.