While the committee receives information about almost every death during or 12 months after a pregnancy in Texas – including pregnancy-unrelated deaths like those of pregnant women in certain car crashes – cases involving deaths from self-managed abortions have not come before the task force.

It’s unclear how many such cases the committee has unknowingly skipped since 2014. CDC data directly from death certificates shows at least 20 deaths in Texas that were coded as abortion-related from 2014 to 2020. Researchers predicted an increase in these kinds of deaths due to abortion bans. A 2021 study estimated a blanket ban of abortion would lead to 21% more pregnancy-related deaths overall in the U.S., noting that their projection was a low estimate because it didn’t include potential deaths caused by unsafe, self-managed abortions.