Infant deaths increased after Texas banned early abortions, study finds

Infant mortality in Texas increased after the state passed a law that banned abortions in early pregnancy, a study1 has reported.Texas’s Senate Bill 8 (SB 8), the first law in the US to strictly limit abortion, came into effect on 1 September 2021. It banned abortions after cardiac activity could be detected, usually at about six weeks of pregnancy. Before the bill was passed Texas had allowed abortion up to 20 weeks of pregnancy. The US Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion in June 2022.2Researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health analysed death certificates and found that neonatal and infant deaths in Texas increased 12.9% between 2021 and 2022, this compared with a 1.8% increase in the rest of the US. Their findings, published in JAMA Paediatrics, show that many deaths were because of congenital anomalies.Alison Gemmill, assistant professor in the Bloomberg School’s department of population,…
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