by Shoshana Gordon/Axios
Why it matters: Texas is the epicenter of the country’s battle over abortion rights. Knowing whether abortion restrictions impact mental health can help guide the policy response, per the study in JAMA Network Open, published by the American Medical Association.
Compared with men, women in Texas experienced a nearly 7 percentage point increase in frequent mental distress associated with the state’s severe abortion restrictions beginning in 2021, the study found.
Texas women experienced frequent mental distress at an increase of 5.3 percentage points compared to women in other states that had not yet approved abortion restrictions. The study defined frequent mental distress as 14 or more days of poor mental health during the previous 30 days. It looked at changes following restrictions in Texas that took effect in September 2021, banning abortions at six weeks of pregnancy, then one of the most restrictive state abortion laws in the nation. Texas later prohibited most abortions in 2022 after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The rate of sepsis and pregnancy-related deaths in Texas rose after 2021, a ProPublica investigation found earlier this year. this first-of-its-kind analysis is the most detailed look yet into a rise in life-threatening complications for women experiencing pregnancy loss under Texas’ abortion ban. The rate of sepsis shot up more than 50% for women hospitalized when they lost their pregnancies in the second trimester, ProPublica found. The surge in life-threatening infection was most pronounced for patients whose fetus may still have had a heartbeat when they arrived at the hospital. Doing so would have been considered an abortion.
The new reporting shows that, after the state banned abortion, dozens more pregnant and post-partum women died in Texas hospitals than had in pre-pandemic years, which ProPublica used as a baseline to avoid COVID-19-related distortions. As the maternal mortality rate dropped nationally, ProPublica found, it rose substantially in Texas. ProPublica purchased and analyzed seven years of Texas’ hospital discharge data for this study.
Thirteen maternal health experts who reviewed ProPublica’s findings say they add to the evidence that the state’s abortion ban is leading to dangerous delays in care. Texas law threatens up to 99 years in prison for providing an abortion. Though the ban includes an exception for a “medical emergency”, the definition of what constitutes an emergency has been subject to confusion and debate. Many said the ban is the only explanation they could see for the sudden jump in sepsis cases.
The article continues at great length, apparently needing to “prove” the findings are real, not least because of a lack of previously existing evidence in Texas that when a fetus dies in utero, the risk of life-threatening sepsis in the woman is high, quick to happen and quick to kill her – which is considered standard knowledge elsewhere…
Last year, there were no public hearings, even though women had sued the state after being denied treatment for their pregnancy complications. This year, though some Republicans appeared open to change, others have gone a different direction. One recently filed a bill that would allow the state to charge women who get an abortion with homicide, for which they could face the death penalty.
[You have to read the whole article to believe it. Editor]
SOURCES: ProPublica, Texas banned abortion, then sepsis rates soared. by Lizzie Presser, Andrea Suozzo, Sophie Chou and Kavitha Surana. 20 February 2025, and Axios, by Megan Stringer, 25 June 2025.