What Has Happened Two Years After Dobbs?

A "culture of life" in America has meant more infant deaths, more pregnant women nearly dying, more kids living in poverty, and no "pro-life" efforts to help moms and babies.

Photo by Manny Becerra on Unsplash

Two years ago this week, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, overturning Roe v. Wade and ending the era of legal abortion in the United States. Over the past two years, Republican-dominated legislatures have banned abortion in more than a dozen US states. A promised “culture of life” in which mothers and babies are supported has not materialized. Instead, more babies are dying in anti-abortion states. Pregnant women are bleeding out in hospital rooms, in their cars, on their bathroom floors. Couples hoping to use fertility treatments to have children are seeing their family-building hopes dashed.

A “pro-life” nation has turned out to be one that is authoritarian, dangerous, and too often deadly. On this dark anniversary, I thought it would be useful to do a specific accounting of what, exactly, the anti-abortion movement has wrought with its many wins.

• Babies are dying more often in Texas. In Texas, where abortion is now criminalized after six weeks of pregnancy with virtually no exceptions, infant mortality has increased by 8%, meaning that hundreds more babies in the state have died. The largest driver of this increase? Congenital anomalies. In other words, these are babies who suffered from deadly health problems, but whose mothers were forced by law to carry them, birth them, and watch them die. Texas, like just about every other anti-abortion state in the US, bans abortion with no exceptions for fetal anomaly.

• Mothers die more often in abortion-hostile states. Women who get pregnant and have babies are nearly two-and-a-half times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes in states that ban abortion compared to states that do not. And these numbers appear to be going up.

• Not a single “pro-life” state has put a mandatory paid family leave policy into place. Not one. These states will force women to have babies, but they won’t require that new moms get even a single paid day off.

• 25 million women of reproductive age live in states that ban abortion. Every single one of these women is deemed a second-class citizen by her government. Every single one has fewer rights to end her own pregnancy than to end her dog’s. (That is not a joke — in anti-abortion states, you can legally get an abortion for your dog, but not for yourself).

• Medical residents are avoiding “pro-life” states. Applications to residency programs in states with abortion bans declined 4.2% between 2023 and 2024, compared to just a 0.6% drop-off in pro-choice states — and applications to OB/GYN programs specifically dropped 6.7% in states with abortion bans, while OB/GYN programs in pro-choice states saw applications increase. Many anti-abortion states already face doctor shortages and healthcare deserts, and by banning abortion, they make it dangerous of OB/GYNs to practice. Doctors may face arrest and jail time for offering standard reproductive care in emergencies. Even those who don’t provide elective abortions need to know the basics of abortion care in order to properly manage miscarriages, and they are not getting that training thanks to “pro-life” laws.

• Idaho lost nearly a quarter of its obstetricians, and more than half of its high-risk obstetricians. Since imposing criminal penalties on doctors who provide even health-saving abortions for women, 22% of obstetricians in Idaho, and 55% of the state’s high-risk obstetricians, have left the state or stopped practicing. At one rural hospital, labor and delivery services have been paused because there are simply no doctors to employ; women in the area have to travel 168 miles to deliver in an appropriate setting with a trained OB. Idaho now has fewer than five — five — full-time maternal-fetal medicine specialists, the doctors who help women with high-risk pregnancies.