-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email A restrictive abortion law in Texas has been linked to in a sharp uptick in infant mortality that other states did not experience, a new study has found. Pediatric heath researchers from John Hopkins University report the number of newborn babies dying in Texas has increased by approximately 13% since the state's near-total abortion ban went into effect, according to a recent investigation in JAMA Pediatrics . The rest of the United States saw only a 2% infant mortality increase in the same period.
Deadly congenital abnormalities were the leading cause of death, increasing 22.9% in the state compared to 2.9% nationwide.
Researchers said this suggests a rise in cases where women are forced to carry a pregnancy to term, despite knowing the fetus had little or no chance of survival. "Our analysis provides among the first empirical evidence on the association of recent highly restrictive abortion policies with infant health," the authors wrote, noting "we were unable to examine differences by race and ethnicity, which are currently available on death certificate data, due to the large amount of missing data in these subgroups." Known as SB8 , the Texas law bans abortion after six weeks with few exceptions in life-threatening pregnancies.
It is also called the Texas Heartbeat Act , though this is misleading given a fetus does not actually have a heart at this stage . Six weeks is a period often before many people realize they're pregnant. "W.
