No, Pro-Life Laws Have Not Worsened Public-Health Outcomes for Women

Last week the Commonwealth Fund released a state scorecard on women’s health and reproductive care. It provided state-level data on a range of public-health outcomes, including maternal-mortality rates, breast- and cervical-cancer deaths, and rates of postpartum depression. Some Northeastern states received high rankings while many Southern states fared poorly. This study has been covered by mainstream media outlets including ABC News, NBC News, CNN, the Dallas Morning News, and Bloomberg.com.

In the accompanying news release, the Commonwealth Fund states that the findings raise concerns about the ripple effects of the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade.  Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media’s coverage of the study was all too quick to include that spin. Bloomberg in its headline claimed that maternal deaths were highest in states that restrict abortion.

Unsurprisingly, there is much less here than meets the eye. The spin that recently enacted state-level pro-life laws have hurt public-health outcomes for women is flawed for two important reasons. First, nearly all of the public-health data that was presented in the Commonwealth Fund scorecard comes from 2022. Dobbs was decided in June 2022, and many states did not start enforcing protections of preborn children until later that year.  Overall, it is pretty ridiculous to blame high maternal-mortality rates and other poor public-health outcomes on pro-life policies that in many cases were in effect for less than half the year.

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Second, the study does not provide any evidence that recent pro-life laws worsened public-health outcomes. The scorecard does not compare pre-Dobbs data to post-Dobbs data. All it shows is that some states with strong pro-life laws fare poorly on some public-health metrics. The problem is that many states with strong protections for the preborn arealso states with above-average poverty rates. In general, states with high poverty rates also tend to have below-average public-health outcomes. Overall, poverty is a cause of poor public health, not pro-life laws.

Overall, CDC data show that maternal deaths in the United States decreased by over 16 percent between 2022 and 2023. Furthermore, there is a body of data showing that pro-life laws are consistent with positive public-health outcomes. Maternal-mortality rates in Chile continued to fall after protections for preborn children were put in place in 1989. Poland has among the strongest pro-life laws in Europe and one of the lowest maternal-morality rates. Unfortunately, positive health outcomes in countries with strong pro-life policies usually receive scant attention from the mainstream media.

LifeNews Note: Michael J. New is an assistant professor at the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America and is an associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_J_New

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