If the U.S. Supreme Court does as its leaked draft opinion says and strikes down Roe v. Wade, researchers expect that in the following year, roughly 75,000 people who want, but can’t get, abortions will give birth instead.
They’ll do so in a country where pregnancy and childbirth continue to become more dangerous.
Government data released this year shows that U.S. maternal deaths increased significantly in the first year of the pandemic, going from 754 in 2019 to 861 in 2020, a 14% jump. The death rate for Black women was almost three times higher than that for white women.
The stats for 2020 were no surprise. As ProPublica detailed in 2017, the U.S. has fallen behind other wealthy nations and many less affluent ones where deaths linked to pregnancy and childbirth have plummeted over the past two decades. Deaths are only one yardstick for measuring maternal health. For every U.S. woman who dies as a result of pregnancy or childbirth, up to 70 suffer dangerous and sometimes life-threatening complications.
The landscape for maternal health post-Roe would […]
I cannot imagine why a woman could not go to another state which allows abortion to get one. Of course that precludes any Supreme Court decision which would ban the procedure. The Supreme court should not interfere with state’s rights to decide for themselves whether Roe is OK in their state and whether women should or should not have rights over their own body.