Infant Mortality in Texas -- Already High -- Increased After SB 8 and Dobbs

A new study in JAMA Pediatrics (June 24, 2024) (abstract here, apparently free, at least for a while) finds that infant and neonatal deaths in Texas increased 12.9% after Texas banned nearly all abortions after an embryonic heartbeat could be detected (usually around the sixth week of gestation). The Texas law in question is Senate Bill 8, passed in 2021, and its restrictions are legally unassailable after SCOTUS's 2022 decision in Dobbs to wipe Roe v. Wade off the books, which eliminated federal constitutional protection for the right to choose to and a pregnancy. 

Before SB 8 was enacted, Texas accounted for slightly more than 10% of all neonatal and infant deaths in the United States, about 15% more than Texas's 8.7% percent of the total U.S, population. Significantly, the study observes that "[d]escriptive statistics by cause of death showed that infant deaths attributable to congenital anomalies in 2022 increased more for Texas (22.9% increase) but not the rest of the US (3.1% decrease)."

The study cites the increase in infant and neonatal mortality as one of the "unintended consequences" of SB 8, which is debatable if you believe that persons (including members of a legislative body) presumably intend the reasonably foreseeable consequences of their actions. Banning abortions for all intents and purposes guaranteed an increase in the number of fetuses with fatal anomalies and other conditions incompatible with life that would be carried to viability and then die. Anyone in the Texas legislature who didn't see this coming doesn't belong in public office. The same goes for any legislator who saw this coming and voted for SB 8 anyway.

The results of Texas's cruel abortion law -- cited as "important unintended consequences" by the authors of the study -- include "trauma to families and medical cost as a result of increases in infant mortality." Trauma to literally hundreds of families who have been harmed in this particular manner by SB 8. The impact on foster care has been significant. The economic burden for many families produces additional trauma. The cascade of effects of our laws is, in a word, ghastly.