Hi Reader,
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, doctors warned that women would die, but lawmakers who passed state abortion bans didn’t listen. For years, the consequences weren’t tracked. The CDC didn’t ask states to note deaths linked to abortion bans, and the states that passed these laws were doing little to investigate their impacts.
So we stepped up, dug deep and uncovered the heartbreaking realities of restrictive abortion laws, breaking story after story that documented their life-threatening consequences and sparked urgent calls for change.
Just look at our impact in Texas.
Since Texas banned most abortions in 2021, no one had studied the statewide effects on pregnant women experiencing complications. So we sifted through data on millions of pregnancy hospitalizations and analyzed the outcomes before and after the ban. And we published the most detailed look yet into a rise in life-threatening complications for women experiencing pregnancy loss under Texas’ abortion ban. Our data analysis found a seismic split in how medical institutions in Texas’ two largest metro areas, Houston and Dallas, treated miscarrying patients — and in their outcomes. When women experiencing pregnancy loss in states with abortion bans told us they wished they had known what to expect and how to advocate for themselves, we created this guide for anyone who finds themselves in the same position.
We measured, calculated and laid bare how state abortion bans lead to preventable deaths. And legislators are responding.
Last month, the Texas Senate unanimously passed legislation that aims to prevent maternal deaths under the state’s strict abortion ban. Written in response to our investigation last year, Senate Bill 31, called The Life of the Mother Act, represents a remarkable turn among the Republican lawmakers who were the original supporters of the ban. For the first time in four years, they acknowledged that women were being denied care because of confusion about the law and took action to clarify its terms.
And the impact of this series is bigger than Texas. Lawmakers are filing more than a dozen bills to expand abortion access in at least seven states. Some — including in Florida, Kentucky and North Dakota — were filed in direct response to ProPublica’s reporting on the fatal consequences of restrictive abortion laws. Reader support helped make that possible.
When the government stops tracking the consequences of its policies, it’s left to journalism to uncover what’s happening and report it in verifiable and painstaking detail. Your support makes it possible for ProPublica to expose unsafe laws and bring these hidden crises and preventable deaths into the national spotlight. Time and again, the difficult truths our journalists uncover have inspired people and policymakers to demand better from their institutions.
Who funds this critical work? Readers. Thanks to donations from folks like you, we’re growing larger, getting stronger and spurring more impact than ever before. Give today and help ProPublica ensure that we continue to have the resources to follow the most important stories wherever they lead — for however long it takes.
Thanks so much,
Jill Shepherd
Proud ProPublican
