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reproductive healthcare
A Public Health Emergency: How Abortion Bans Are Fueling Maternal Deaths in America
People living in states that have banned abortion are nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after compared with those in states where abortion remains legal and accessible.
Apr 10, 2026
The maternal mortality crisis in the United States is a national embarrassment, and it’s unfolding in real time. The US continues to have one of the highest maternal death rates among high-income countries, and the situation is getting worse, not better. Behind this trend is a growing body of research showing that state abortion bans directly contribute to increased maternal mortality, especially in communities already burdened by systemic inequities.
Maternal mortality has traditionally reflected deep structural problems in a healthcare system that fails to serve all people equally. In 2024, the US maternal mortality rate ticked upward again, reversing a brief decline and demonstrating that the crisis is far from over. Experts point to a range of causes, including reduced access to prenatal care, maternity care deserts, and strained hospital systems, all problems intensified in states with abortion restrictions and in states with increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
A comprehensive analysis from the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) mortality figures shows that people living in states that have banned abortion are nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after compared with those in states where abortion remains legal and accessible. What’s more, in supportive states where abortion has remained legal, maternal mortality has declined by about 21% since 2022, suggesting that access to comprehensive reproductive care saves lives.
Restricting abortion does more than eliminate a medical procedure; it forces people to carry pregnancies that pose very real health risks. Childbirth has inherent dangers from hemorrhage and infection to hypertensive disorders and cardiac events, and the risk of death from pregnancy is at least 44 times higher than from abortion. When abortion is inaccessible, people are compelled to continue unwanted or medically unsafe pregnancies. That dynamic alone drives increased deaths that could otherwise have been prevented.
Bans do not reduce the prevalence of abortion; they reduce its safety, push people into riskier medical scenarios, and leave pregnant people with fewer options even when their health is at stake.
Racial and socioeconomic disparities in maternal mortality did not begin with the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Black birthing people in the US have long faced significantly higher death rates than white birthing people, a symptom of deep structural racism in healthcare, poverty, and chronic stress. But abortion bans have exacerbated these inequities.
In states with abortion bans, Black birthing people are more than three times as likely as white birthing people in those same states to die from pregnancy-related causes. Those figures make crystal clear that when we talk about maternal mortality, we are talking about a crisis of racial inequity, class inequity, and political neglect. States with the worst maternal health outcomes, including Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, are predominantly in the South and have enacted some of the most restrictive reproductive laws.
These disparities compound with other conditions such as limited access to early prenatal care—which the CDC reports has declined across the country, with the steepest drops among Black mothers. Delays in early care are associated with worse outcomes for both mother and baby and are worsened by the closure of maternity care facilities in rural and under-resourced areas.
For undocumented and immigrant communities, the maternal mortality crisis is layered with additional barriers. Fear of immigration enforcement, including ICE, deters people from seeking care, even in emergencies. Clinics in border states with large immigrant populations were already medically underserved before Dobbs, and abortion bans have deepened that inaccessibility. Many undocumented people lack insurance, fear reporting, or face economic barriers that make traveling for care impossible. These structural obstacles do not just delay care, they can literally cost lives.
Immigrant and mixed-status families are disproportionately concentrated in states with abortion bans, like Texas, Arizona, and Florida, meaning that people who already face the greatest systemic barriers to healthcare are also the most likely to lack access to safe abortion or comprehensive maternal services. This intersection of racist policy, reproductive restriction, and anti-immigrant enforcement creates a perfect storm that pushes already vulnerable people further to the margins and deeper toward harm.
Critics of abortion argue from moral or ideological positions, but the evidence shows that access to abortion care is fundamentally a matter of public health. Bans do not reduce the prevalence of abortion; they reduce its safety, push people into riskier medical scenarios, and leave pregnant people with fewer options even when their health is at stake.
We are now witnessing a preventable loss of life, and the window to act is closing.
We know how to prevent many maternal deaths: Expand access to comprehensive reproductive care (including abortion), strengthen prenatal and postpartum support, increase Medicaid coverage, invest in maternity care infrastructure, and dismantle the historic and systemic inequities that predict who lives and who dies. We know these interventions work because states that have protected reproductive rights are already seeing declines in maternal mortality.
To ignore this crisis is to ignore evidence, dignity, and the lives of pregnant people, especially those in Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and economically disadvantaged communities.
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Separating Abortion and Pregnancy-Loss Care Harms Everyone
New bills seek to reinforce a false binary between abortion care and care for pregnancy loss, but this will only harm pregnant patients and further restrict access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive healthcare.
Mar 29, 2026
People experiencing pregnancy complications in states that restrict abortion have died preventable deaths; others have been forced to bleed out while waiting for providers to deem their conditions were life-threatening enough to receive care under narrow legal exceptions or had to travel out of state for emergency abortion care. Meanwhile survivors of rape and incest have been denied care, despite exceptions that supposedly permitted abortion in those circumstances.
This is the new reality of seeking pregnancy-loss care and abortion care post-Dobbs. But instead of addressing the root issue—abortion bans and restrictions—policymakers are advancing a new strategy: redefining abortion itself. These new bills seek to reinforce a false binary between abortion care and care for pregnancy loss, but this will only harm pregnant patients and further restrict access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive healthcare.
For example, a bill in Utah would allow people who have obtained abortion care for certain reasons (such as treating an ectopic pregnancy; removing a dead fetus; or in the cases of fetal anomaly, rape, or incest) to request that their medical record state that the abortion was “involuntary.” The proposed legislation attempts to legally codify the distinction between “elective” abortions and those obtained for medical reasons to further stigmatize abortion care. The bill’s sponsor has been at the forefront of restricting abortion in Utah, and claims this bill is for medical records and to prevent patient “distress.” However, there is no need for legislators to define medical care for the sake of providers or patients. People’s reproductive experiences are highly personal, and the language they use to describe them should be up to them—not politicians.
In other states, attempts to omit care for pregnancy loss from the legal definition of abortion opens the door for abortion to be further restricted. In Missouri, Wisconsin, and South Dakota, bills are being pushed that change the definition of abortion to exclude a range of pregnancy-loss care. Wisconsin’s bill, for example, aims to “exempt [this care] from abortion restrictions,” implying that there is some reproductive healthcare that should be protected, while some should not.
The only way to ensure that people in medical emergencies or who have experienced violence can get the care they need is expanding and protecting abortion care for all.
These bills all also rely on language that personifies the fetus or embryo, advancing the long-held anti-abortion goal of granting full legal rights to embryos and fetuses. Fetal personhood directly undercuts pregnant people’s rights and can be used to target other reproductive healthcare such as forms of contraception and IVF. While this language was eventually removed from the South Dakota bill, its inclusion when it was first introduced exposes the policymakers' intention: to carve out some forms of pregnancy care and use that as a foundation to attack abortion care.
The push to “clarify” exceptions, or what care can be provided under abortion bans, stems from understandable public outrage—outrage we share. The horrific outcomes for pregnant people who have died preventable deaths are the direct result of abortion bans--but adding legal carve outs designed by the same policymakers who champion draconian abortion laws is not the way to ensure that everyone has access to essential pregnancy-loss care.
The truth is, it’s impossible to silo abortion care from the rest of reproductive healthcare through medical or legal frameworks. Abortion, pregnancy-loss care, and pregnancy care are interconnected by their practices, medications, and the people that provide and obtain them. The only way to ensure that people in medical emergencies or who have experienced violence can get the care they need is expanding and protecting abortion care for all.
Separating abortion care from pregnancy-loss care also does not align with many people's lived experiences. Guttmacher research shows that people’s understanding of the boundaries between reproductive experiences are deeply nuanced. The author and model Chrissy Tiegen, for example, has been public about redefining her own pregnancy loss as an abortion, which she proceeded with after learning she would not survive the pregnancy without medical intervention. Ultimately, how someone defines their pregnancy outcome and the care they receive is subjective, and policymakers’ efforts to establish clear legal distinctions ignore the frequently blurred boundaries between these experiences.
Categorizing abortions as elective or "involuntary” is not only stigmatizing and medically unnecessary but ignores the complexities of people’s reproductive lives. Likewise, “clarifying” exceptions is simply another tool of the anti-abortion movement to further restrict and stigmatize abortion. What pregnant people need is compassionate and personalized care, not further state involvement in their bodies and decisions.
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National Abortion Providers, Thank You!
On this National Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, during Women’s History Month, we reflect on what it truly means to lead change by honoring providers who stand courageous in clinics across the country.
Mar 10, 2026
Each March, as the world turns its gaze toward Women’s History Month, we are reminded of the countless women whose courage, intellect, resilience, and leadership have reshaped our world. For 2026, the national theme—“Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future”—honors the women who are reimagining and rebuilding systems to ensure long-term sustainability: environmental, economic, educational, and societal. It recognizes women’s leadership in creating a future rooted in equity, justice, and opportunity for all.
Within that narrative sits a group of women and gender-expansive people whose work rarely appears in history books but whose impact resonates through lives across the nation: abortion providers.
On March 10, National Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, we are called to honor these fearless caregivers who sit at the frontlines of reproductive healthcare. They embody the very essence of this year’s Women’s History Month theme of leading change and shaping a future where bodily autonomy, dignity, and compassionate care are not just ideals but realities.
Abortion providers deliver essential medical care in the face of extraordinary adversity. They confront threats, protests, harassment, legal warfare, and violence—all aimed at trying to silence them, intimidate them, or push them out of the work they know is crucial. They endure anti-clinic demonstrations, surveillance by extremists, and political rhetoric designed to vilify not just a medical procedure but the fundamental humanity of the people they serve. Despite this, they show up day after day with resolve and open hearts.
Just as the suffragists, civil rights leaders, and healthcare pioneers of earlier eras were architects of change, today’s abortion providers are reshaping what justice looks like in the 21st century.
Their courage is deeply personal. It is the exam room conversation where a provider listens without judgment. It is the moment they guide a patient through a complex decision with clarity and care. It is the steady hand on a shoulder trembling with fear and hope. This is leadership: not in some distant boardroom, but in shared humanity. This is sustainability: building systems of care that endure in the face of relentless attack.
At the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (WRRAP), we fund patients and eliminate financial barriers. But it is abortion providers who make care happen. They are the ones with the medical training, the compassion, the resilience, and sometimes the very bodies standing between patients and an unsafe, uncertain future.
Our work at WRRAP could not exist without these providers at the forefront. They are our partners in every sense bridging policy and possibility, funding and freedom, fear and resilience. We provide financial support so a patient doesn’t have to choose between rent and care, but it is the provider who opens their door, who holds space for people, who offers healing and hope in a world that so often refuses it.
To the providers who dedicate their lives to this work: We see you, we thank you, and we honor you. You are shaping a sustainable future, one where people have autonomy over their bodies and futures; one where care is delivered with compassion, dignity, and respect; one where equity is more than a slogan but a lived practice.
The work of abortion providers is history making. Just as the suffragists, civil rights leaders, and healthcare pioneers of earlier eras were architects of change, today’s abortion providers are reshaping what justice looks like in the 21st century. They are environmental stewards of well-being, economic innovators in equitable care delivery, educators in dignity and consent, and societal leaders in advancing reproductive freedom for all.
Being a provider today means doing the work under threats that others can scarcely imagine. It means navigating legal labyrinths designed to block care, enduring hostile legislative sessions, and facing protests that seek to make the act of healing itself controversial. And yet, providers persist, not because it is easy, but because it is necessary.
On this National Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, during Women’s History Month, we reflect on what it truly means to lead change by honoring providers who stand courageous in clinics across the country, whose safety has been threatened because they chose care over fear, whose compassion has saved futures with every patient they serve.
To every abortion provider today: Thank you for leading. Thank you for caring. Thank you for building a future rooted in justice, compassion, and dignity.
We are grateful beyond words, and we stand with you. This is our collective power.
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