Committee members discovered longtime omission this year
Across the country, maternal mortality review committees are tasked with analyzing pregnancy-related deaths and reporting information to their respective states and the CDC.. It's expected to cover 2020 pregnancy deaths and, later, those from 2021. But as members of the committee have been working through cases sent to them by the Texas Department of State Health Services , they were unaware that abortion-related cases have been omitted.
“When asked by many how the Texas would gauge the impact of recent national and state legislative changes, we were confident when we responded that we review maternal deaths regardless of pregnancy outcome,” said task force Chair Dr. Carla Ortique during the committee’s March 22 public meeting. “We're now aware that that will not be the case.”
Texas’ task force is relatively new. The legislature created the Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee in 2013 after a dramatic increase in reported maternal deaths in the. Ortique said that a review of the statute that created the committee revealed that, for its entire decade of operation, the task force has not been privy to cases involving abortion.
It’s unclear how many such cases the committee has unknowingly skipped since 2014. CDC data directly from death certificates shows at leasta blanket ban of abortion would lead to 21% more pregnancy-related deaths overall in the U.S., noting that their projection was a low estimate because it didn’t include potential deaths caused by unsafe, self-managed abortions.women die from unsafe abortions every year.
“It's my hope,” said Chair Ortique, “that members of the public, the media, professional organizations, community organizations, and all that recognize that the preventable death of a mother is unacceptable will hear these updates and understand the importance of engaging in efforts to ensure that the work of this committee is able to continue and will raise their voices.”: This story has been updated to include abortion-related death data from the CDC.
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