To reproductive justice activist Renee Bracy Sherman, theirs are the forgotten names.
Women like Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old medical assistant from Georgia, who suffered a rare complication from a medication abortion in August 2022 and died after waiting 20 hours for an emergency surgery to remove fetal tissue from her body. Thurman’s physicians worried that had they acted earlier, they might be prosecuted under the state’s restrictive anti-abortion law.
Three months later, another Georgia woman, Candi Miller, died after experiencing a similar complication while undergoing a medicated abortion at home — her family said she did not seek out a physician’s care because of the Georgia abortion law.
State officials later found that the deaths of both Thurman and Miller were “preventable,” but had not been avoided because of fear of repercussions from the Georgia ban, which went into effect shortly after the Supreme Court eliminated federal protections for abortion with its June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“I’d love to say these were unintended consequences,” said Bracy Sherman, who recently co-wrote a book about the history of reproductive freedom in the wake of the court’s decision. “This is an intended consequence of Dobbs because folks who needed abortions weren’t able to get them. It’s really sad that this is where we’re at.”
A new study in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Pediatrics adds to a growing body of research of how pregnancy-related deaths are a reflection of where the nation is since the Dobbs decision. The study, which focused on infant mortality, found that the deaths of newborns have increased by 7%, or the equivalent of 247 deaths, since Dobbs was decided.
Among infants with congenital abnormalities, the death rate had increased even more — by 10%, or about 204 deaths.
“I study shocks like economic recessions, COVID-19, 9/11, the police killing of George Floyd, things that basically seemed to shake the country or the region” said Parvati Singh, a professor of epidemiology at Ohio State University who was the lead author on the study. “The main takeaway from the analysis is that it seems that this shock, this Supreme Court decision, may have preceded an increase in infant mortality in specific months overall and infant mortality with congenital anomalies again in specific months after the Dobbs decision.”
While the study did not examine race, experts pointed to a 2021 study that estimated pregnant Black women would see their mortality rates increase by a third — the highest rate among demographic groups — if a hypothetical total abortion ban were ever enacted.
Another study found that states with the strictest abortion laws typically provide the least support to women and families, including government aid such as the Women, Infants and Children nutritional assistance program. And experts say states like Texas may be exacerbating the infant death numbers because abortion bans there are compelling people to carry nonviable pregnancies to term.
Asha Hassan, a demographic researcher at the University of Minnesota, said the findings about infant mortality could be a sign of broader trends across the country.
“Texas is kind of considered the canary in the coal mine for understanding what’s happening post-Dobbs,” Hassan said. “So kind of what happens in Texas is usually a very good indicator for what we can or are expecting and seeing nationally a little bit later after.”
Hassan, who was not part of the infant mortality study team, noted that the researchers examined the 36-month period bracketed by the Dobbs decision.
“That’s a snapshot of a very specific time,” Hassan said. “And it’s possible that that might change or level off after a certain amount of time. But it says a lot that within 18 months before and after that, there’s such a dramatic difference” in infant mortality rates.
Hassan noted that other studies are likely underway examining the specific role of race in infant mortality.
“Given the fact that we know that these are generally things that disproportionately affect Black communities and Black families, that there probably is a racial inequity — or potentially even an increasing gap — that we should probably investigate in future research,” she said.
For Bracy Sherman, the co-author of Liberating Abortion — a series of oral histories in which people of color recount their personal experiences with the procedure — there is power in telling your story. Bracy Sherman, who said she had an abortion, said she wants people to recognize that the way in which we talk about abortion or talk about people who had abortions or show up for abortion access matters.
A Chicago native who has been called “the Beyoncé of abortion storytelling,” Bracy Sherman said that she is concerned some might minimize stories about the deaths of women like Thurman and Miller because of the already dismal statistics of Black maternal health in our nation.
Shanette Williams, the mother of Amber Nicole Thurman, holds a photo of her daughter, who died in 2022 from a treatable infection due to delays to her medical care stemming from Georgia’s restrictive abortion law. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)
But more than anything, Bracy Sherman said she is calling for the decriminalization of abortion and all pregnancy outcomes so that “everyone is able to get the care they need during their pregnancy without fear of being stigmatized or worse, jailed.” In one such case, Amari Marsh, a 23-year-old South Carolina college student, spent 22 days in a detention center and was held without bond, facing 20 years to life in prison after giving birth unexpectedly during her second trimester. She was cleared by a grand jury of murder/homicide by child abuse charges in August.
“Then it’s sort of, like. ‘Well, that happened to Black women because we already have a high maternal mortality rate and I’m safe,’” Bracy Sherman said. “No one is safe. But everyone could be subject to criminalization. We do need to be honest about the way in which criminalization and maternal health outcomes work because of racial disparities, anti-Blackness and criminalization in this country.”
That sense of criminalization, Bracy Sherman said, may be one of the most concerning aspects of pregnancy-related deaths in the Black community.
“Maybe,” Bracy Sherman said, “if there were more stories and information about that rather than the fearmongering, the doctor treating Amber would have known that they could have provided her care and did not have to delay.”
The post The Post-Dobbs Reality for Black Maternal and Infant Health appeared first on Capital B News.