Last week, the Gender Equity Policy Institute announced that the maternal-mortality rate in Texas increased by a whopping 56 percent between 2019 and 2022. They purportedly collected data from publicly available CDC reports and found that Texas experienced a much larger increase in its maternal-mortality rate than did other states. The findings were leaked to NBC News, and reports of a large increase in the maternal-mortality rate Texas have been covered by Jezebel, Newser, and other news outlets.
Unsurprisingly, the media spin is that pro-life policies in Texas are responsible for the large increase. However, there are reasons for skepticism. First, the Gender Equity Policy Institute has not released its full report and has only released a very limited amount of data. Additionally, the Gender Equity Policy Institute has no previous background either collecting or analyzing maternal-mortality data from Texas or elsewhere.
Taking the data at face value, their report indicates that the maternal-mortality rate in Texas actually declined by 35 percent between 2021 and 2022. In 2022, the Texas Heartbeat Act had already taken effect. Shortly after the Dobbsdecision that summer, Texas started enforcing a pro-life law that largely protected all preborn children. In short, during the year with the strongest pro-life protections in place, the rate of maternal mortality in Texas actually fell by 35 percent. Furthermore, any reported increase between 2019 and 2021 could have been due to Covid-19 or other factors.
Pro-lifers have seen this movie before. In 2016, the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology released a report that found that the Texas maternal-mortality rate doubled between 2010 and 2012. The authors expressed skepticism, stating that such a large increase was unlikely outside of war, a natural disaster, or economic upheaval. However, supporters of legal abortion and their allies in the mainstream media pounced. They quickly blamed state funding cuts to Planned Parenthood.
This was despite the fact that the purported maternal-mortality increase occurred before the funding cuts took effect.
However, a state task force that reviewed individual death certificates found that many of the pregnancy related deaths were miscounted. Overall, the Texas maternal-mortality rate in 2012 was more than 61 percent lower than what was reported in the 2016 Obstetrics and Gynecology article.
Indeed, there is a good chance that the current story will follow the same trajectory. Corrected data will very likely show that the incidence of maternal mortality in Texas maternal is much less than what is being reported by the mainstream media.