Infant deaths have increased in the United States since the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe vs. Wade and allowed states to make abortion illegal, researchers reported Monday.

The change became detectable three months after the June 2022 ruling with an elevated rate of infant mortality involving babies born with serious congenital anomalies, the researchers found.

By the end of 2023, there were six months when the death rate for infants with severe anatomical problems was significantly higher than in the years leading up to the high court’s decision. The researchers also identified three months when the nation’s overall infant mortality rate had increased.

However, neither of those rates fell below their historical range in the year and a half after the ruling in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The findings, reported Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, were seen as a clear sign that the Dobbs decision has prevented some women from terminating pregnancies that otherwise would have ended in abortion.

  • YaDownWitCPP@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    So babies that were previously aborted that weren’t counted in the infant mortality rate are now dying after birth and are counted in the infant mortality rate.

    Either way, it’s the same number of dead babies.

    • feannag@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      In these cases, though, access to abortion means less suffering, both for the fetus/child and the mother.

    • nman90@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      But now you have the additional costs and trauma of giving birth just to see the baby die in your arms, and for what, because some crazy people say its their sky dads will.

    • harmsy@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Let’s not beat around the bush here. They were aborted because they were basically already dead in the “Fist of the North Star” sense of the phrase. Nothing could be done to save them. The would-be mothers knew there was nothing that could save their pregnancies. Their doctors knew there was nothing that could save these pregnancies. They were forced to keep going anyway.

    • prole
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      1 month ago

      Abortions do not result in dead babies.