Infant Mortality Increased After Dobbs Decision

TUESDAY, Oct. 22, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Infant mortality was higher than expected, both overall and among those with congenital anomalies, for several months after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion, according to a research letter published online Oct. 21 in JAMA Pediatrics.

Parvati Singh, Ph.D., and Maria F. Gallo, Ph.D., both from The Ohio State University in Columbus, examined national monthly trends in infant mortality following the Dobbs decision. The analysis included national monthly data on total live births and infant deaths from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (2018 to 2023).

The researchers found that time-series analyses suggest approximately 0.38 additional infant deaths per 1,000 live births overall and 0.13 deaths with congenital anomalies per 1,000 live births in relevant months after Dobbs. These findings yielded an estimated 7 percent absolute increase in infant mortality overall (~247 excess deaths) and 10 percent in infant mortality with congenital anomalies (~204 excess deaths) in relevant months after Dobbs. No months after June 2022 (post-Dobbs months) showed lower-than-expected infant mortality.

“We await detailed infant mortality data, which will permit more rigorous analyses to evaluate differences in excess infant mortality by restrictiveness of state abortion laws,” the authors write.

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