Texas Banned Abortion. More Babies Died.

Infant mortality in Texas was dropping for nearly a decade -- until 2021, the year the state criminalized abortion.

Photo by Gabriel Tovar on Unsplash

It’s a sad but predictable outcome: The state of Texas criminalized abortion in 2021, before the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs, and an infant mortality rate that had been dropping for nearly a decade spiked up. Nearly a decade’s worth of progress was reversed. Thousands of babies didn’t survive.

In 2022 alone, some 2,200 infants died in Texas, according to state health data obtained by CNN. That’s 227 more infant deaths than before the state abortion ban went into effect, an 11.5% increase. For the previous near-decade, from 2014-2021, infant deaths had declined almost 15%. In the last 9 months of 2022, Texas some roughly 10,000 more births than expected, a rise researchers also attribute to the abortion ban.

To put a finer point on it, the Texas abortion ban seems to have forced thousands upon thousands of women into unwanted pregnancies and births, reversed a nearly decade-long decline in infant mortality, and killed a lot of babies.

And, appallingly, according to CNN, “Infant deaths caused by severe genetic and birth defects rose by 21.6%.”

The Texas abortion ban does not allow abortions even for women pregnant with fetuses that have severe anomalies, including anomalies that are incompatible with life. So it’s not a surprise that a significant part of the rise in infant deaths are those who doctors knew could not survive for long. Behind each of those deaths, though, is woman who was legally barred from deciding to end a doomed pregnancy: A woman who was forced to carry to term, then forced to birth a baby who may have already been dead, or may have lived a short, painful life.

It’s hard to overstate how abjectly cruel it is to force a woman to go through nearly 10 months of pregnancy and the pain and risk of childbirth for an infant that will not survive, or will have such severe problems that its life will be short, brutal, or both. Some women choose this course, and that is their prerogative. But many, when offered the option for abortion, do not.

Severe abnormalities often aren’t discoverable or confirmable until after the first trimester, which means that most abortions for severe abnormalities are procedures requested by women who wanted to have babies. These are wanted pregnancies, carried by women who often already care deeply about their future child’s wellbeing, who may have already picked out a name or started decorating a nursery. The decision to end these pregnancies is often made from a place of profound grief.

Here’s how Samantha Casiano, pregnant with a daughter she named Halo who had anencephaly — a brain and skull that didn’t develop — put it when she was forced by the state of Texas to carry her pregnancy to term:

"If you're on life support, your family can take you off of life support," she says. "I feel like it's the same thing, except for my daughter was in my womb — like I'm her life support. I feel like I should have been able to release her into heaven sooner rather than later, and I wasn't given that right."

And here’s what happened after Casiano’s doctor told her she was legally barred by the state of Texas from ending her pregnancy:

In March, Casiano gave birth to her daughter Halo. After gasping for air for four hours, the baby died, Casiano said during her testimony on Wednesday.

“All she could do was fight to try to get air. I had to watch my daughter go from being pink to red to purple. From being warm to cold,” said Casiano. “I just kept telling myself and my baby that I’m so sorry that this had to happen to you.”

Casiano’s much-wanted daughter was essentially tortured for her only four hours on earth because of “pro-life” politics. Casiano will live the rest of her life with the memory of her daughter struggling, suffocating, and dying. Most of us wouldn’t let a dog suffer like that. Abortion opponents are using the law to force this kind of unnecessary suffering on babies.

And they’re torturing women, too. Here’s what it means to be forced to carry a wanted but can’t-be pregnancy to term: