As abortion advocates present their defense of abortion, they are often grasping to seize the most attention engaging, emotion invoking pleas to gain support. This is often where the phrasing and word choice including “reproductive freedom,” “my body my choice,” and “women’s rights” are highlighted. There is strategy behind the communication being utilized with these specific word choices.
If abortion is presented in such a way to invoke a strong emotional response, it has an increasing possibility of gaining support regardless of the truth and medical factual evidence behind the reality of abortion today.
Maternal mortality is another such strategy. The idea is that if concern over maternal mortality in the United States can be linked to laws regulating abortion within various states, instead of recognizing the abortion itself as a contributor to maternal mortality, the focus can then be moved to promoting abortion access, rather than the dangerous risks to the mothers from the abortion procedure itself.
Before comparisons are made between permissive and restrictive abortion laws, it is beneficial to the topic of discussion to consider maternal mortality rates pre- and post-Roe abortion laws.
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Paul Benjamin Linton, former General Counsel for Americans United for Life, shares in the recent Charlotte Lozier Institute report, "The Impact of Abortion Laws on Maternal Mortality Rates: What is the Evidence?," that “prior to 1967, the overwhelming majority of states prohibited abortion except to save the life of the mother.”
A turning point in history and abortion access began in 1967 through the year 1970. During this timeframe, before Roe, Linton reports 16 states then proceeded to allow for abortion on demand or amended their abortion laws to allow for broad reasoning to support an abortion procedure.
Of significance, Linton notes, “both before and after Roe v. Wade was decided, the United States Department of Health, Education & Welfare published an annual vital statistics report which included both annual data on the number of live births by states and a moving three-year average of maternal mortality data for all fifty states.”
As Linton proceeded to investigate the data of maternal mortality before Roe, he discovered the three-year average of maternal mortality for the entire country of the United States for the period of 1964-1966 was 31.4 deaths per 100,000 live births. The three-year average for the period of 1970-1972, six years later, had dropped to 19.8 deaths per 100,000 live births, a reduction of 11.6 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.
The maternal mortality rate in the 16 states that adjusted their state legislation for permissive laws or no restrictions on abortion access at all between the years of 1967-1970, revealed a marked decline in maternal mortality rate of 33.0 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births during the 1964-1966 period to 20.0 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births during the 1970-1972 period. Linton concludes with this data providing a reduction of 13.0 maternal deaths per 100,00 families.
The states that kept the restrictive laws revealed a maternal mortality rate decline from 30.1 during the timeframe of 1964-1966 to 19.3 for the years of 1970-1972. This provided a reduction of 10.8 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.
“By the end of 1972, the maternal mortality rate for the 29 states that had restrictive laws was actually marginally less than the rate for the 16 permissive states that had adopted permissive laws by the end of 1970,” concludes Linton.
Yet, due to the change only being marginal between permissive and restrictive abortion laws prior to Roe, there was not enough evidence to suggest permissive abortion laws had a positive impact on maternal mortality rates.
The data post-Roe was then also evaluated. The narrative of those in favor of permissive abortion laws would most likely lean towards sharing the rate of maternal mortality would drastically decrease with less to no restrictions on abortion access. Yet, the numbers fail to support this idea.
Interestingly, Linton goes on to report that the maternal mortality rate for the states that had permissive abortion laws beginning in 1967-1970, declined from 20.0 per 100,000 live births during 1970-1972, to 15.3 from 1973-1975, and brought a reduction of 4.7 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.
Linton found that the states that put into place restrictions on abortion saw a decline of 19.3 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births during the first three-year period (1967-1970) to 13.7 during the second, a reduction of 5.6 maternal deaths.
The conclusion of the data presented does provide evidence that whether the abortion law was restrictive or permissive, before Roe was decided, neither abortion law contributed greatly to protecting and saving the lives of women from maternal mortality.
Tweet This: To date there is no evidence to suggest that more restrictive abortion laws contribute to a higher maternal mortality rate.
As we move forward in our country after the Dobbs decision, Linton provides the following conclusion:
“Whether, and to what extent, the changes in mortality rates will be affected by the enactment and enforcement of restrictive abortion laws following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs remain to be seen. However, the only directly relevant real-world comparison available fails to prove, or even suggest, that restrictive abortion laws are associated with higher maternal mortality rates (more so) than permissive laws.”
