Infant deaths have increased in the United States since the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe vs. Wade and allowed states to make abortion illegal, researchers reported Monday.

The change became detectable three months after the June 2022 ruling with an elevated rate of infant mortality involving babies born with serious congenital anomalies, the researchers found.

By the end of 2023, there were six months when the death rate for infants with severe anatomical problems was significantly higher than in the years leading up to the high court’s decision. The researchers also identified three months when the nation’s overall infant mortality rate had increased.

However, neither of those rates fell below their historical range in the year and a half after the ruling in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The findings, reported Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, were seen as a clear sign that the Dobbs decision has prevented some women from terminating pregnancies that otherwise would have ended in abortion.

  • @harmsy
    link
    81 month ago

    Let’s not beat around the bush here. They were aborted because they were basically already dead in the “Fist of the North Star” sense of the phrase. Nothing could be done to save them. The would-be mothers knew there was nothing that could save their pregnancies. Their doctors knew there was nothing that could save these pregnancies. They were forced to keep going anyway.