A Texas health committee that reviews all maternal deaths will not examine cases in 2022 and 2023 — the years directly following the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee made the decision during a September meeting, claiming that it would allow the board to review more recent cases of maternal deaths in a timely matter.
Many state committees analyzing the death of pregnant mothers, however, operate on a two-year lag, according to the Washington Post. This means that the committee would be right on schedule to analyze the maternal deaths in 2022 and 2023.
Roe was overturned in June 2022. In September 2021, Texas implemented a six-week abortion ban.
While the law allows for abortion in cases in which the life of a mother is in danger, doctors have claimed that the language of the bill is vague and makes it difficult for doctors to act quickly in efforts to save the mother’s life.
ProPublica has reported three instances of mothers dying after doctors did not properly treat them for miscarriages due to the abortion bans.
The Texas health committee does not examine deaths of mothers due to an abortion, but women who are miscarrying and are being denied certain medical procedures by health professionals due to abortion laws is a case study within the committee’s scope.
Texas Alliance for Life, a Texas anti-abortion activist group, has called ProPublica’s report of women being denied lifesaving care inaccurate, citing that there have been 119 medically necessary abortions performed in the state since the overturning of Roe.
“Texas laws explicitly allow doctors to perform abortions when a mother’s life or health is at risk,” Texas Alliance for Life Communications Director Amy O’Donnell said in a statement. “The data from Texas Health and Human Services proves that physicians are providing abortions to save women’s lives when medically necessary. ProPublica is attempting to place blame where it doesn’t belong.”
The number of women who died while pregnant, during labor, or in the year after giving birth increased in Texas in 2020 and 2021. The number of maternal deaths rose from 17 per 100,000 births in 2019 to 38 per 100,000 births in 2021. Many experts have attributed this surge in maternal deaths to limited healthcare access during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, some studies suggest the abortion ban enacted in the second half of 2021 may have played a role.
Jennifer Shuford, the commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, has said the committee’s board decision to skip years 2022 and 2023 does not make much sense.
“In 2024, the committee provided recommendations based on findings from maternal deaths that occurred in 2020,” Shuford wrote in a September letter about the decision. “I am concerned that this means the committee’s recommendations to policy makers are still not based on the most recent case cohorts available.”
Other states have maternal mortality committees. Idaho, which passed a near-total abortion ban, dissolved its maternal death committee in 2023. While now reinstated, the committee is facing delays in its review of data.
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And last week, Georgia, a state with a six-week abortion ban, dismissed all members on the state’s maternal mortality committee. The decision came after ProPublica obtained confidential information about two maternal deaths in the state.
“Even though this disclosure was investigated, the investigation was unable to uncover which individual(s) disclosed confidential information,” Kathleen Toomey, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health, wrote in a November letter to the committee. “Therefore, effective immediately the current MMRC is disbanded, and all member seats will be filled through a new application process.”
