STUDY: Pro-Life Laws Aren’t Killing Women

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June of 2022, the pro-abortion movement has had one argument above all others that it has wielded like a weapon: pro-life laws are killing women.

 

The claim has been repeated in major news outlets, amplified by left-leaning politicians, and deployed against state legislatures that dared to protect life in the womb. It’s been stated not as an opinion, but as a settled medical fact.

 

It isn’t a settled fact, however, it never was, and now we have the peer-reviewed evidence to prove it.

A new study published in JAMA Network Open, a highly respected medical journal, has found that states with strong pro-life laws have seen maternal mortality trends that are comparable to, and in many cases better than, states where abortion remains unrestricted.

 

What the Study Actually Found

 

The cohort study examined maternal mortality data across states in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision and its findings are significant. States with strong pro-life laws saw maternal mortality drop by 2.4%. Texas, one of the states most relentlessly targeted by abortion advocates for its Human Life Protection Act, saw maternal mortality fall by 3.3%.

 

A key portion of the study that the abortion lobby doesn’t want Americans to know about is found in the study’s conclusion which states that “abortion bans were not associated with statistically significant overall or state-specific increases in pregnancy-associated, pregnancy-related, maternal, or non-obstetric mortality.”

 

Read that again. Not pregnancy-associated mortality. Not pregnancy-related mortality. Not maternal mortality. Not non-obstetric mortality. Across every category they measured, abortion bans showed no statistically significant increase in deaths.

 

The argument that pro-life laws are a public health catastrophe isn’t supported by the data. This makes the pro-abortion argument a mere narrative, and like most narratives built to serve a political agenda, it collapses under scrutiny.

 

A Lie Was Told. So, Who Told It?

 

The pro-abortion movement didn’t simply express concern about maternal outcomes after Dobbs, a concern one might, in good faith, understand. They made categorical, repeated declarations that women were dying because of pro-life laws. They named states and hospitals and then slapped a “crisis” label on it. They used that language to lobby international bodies, to pressure medical associations, and to emotionally devastate anyone who might otherwise be open to a conversation about when life begins.

 

I’ve been in rooms at the United Nations where this same language is deployed and watched international delegations weaponize the word “maternal mortality” to push abortion access on countries that haven’t asked for it and don’t want it. This issue is far from merely being a domestic agenda item for the pro-abortion lobby, it’s an international fight as well.

 

Texas: The Favourite Villain That Became a Case Study in Pro-Life Success

 

Texas deserves special attention, because no state has been more aggressively targeted by the abortion lobby’s fear campaign.

 

Texas was held up as the cautionary tale; the state where women would suffer, where hospitals would be paralyzed, where doctors would be afraid to treat pregnant women. Horror stories began filling media headlines as anecdotes were elevated to data. The state became a symbol of everything pro-abortion advocates wanted the public to fear.

 

But thanks to the JAMA Network Open study, it reveals how Texas saw a 3.3% drop in maternal mortality following the implementation of its pro-life protections. The state that was supposed to be ground zero for a maternal health catastrophe is instead a data point in favour of the pro-life position.

 

It’s worth asking: will the outlets that spent years publishing alarming stories about Texas now publish corrections? Will the politicians who cited maternal mortality as grounds for overturning pro-life legislation acknowledge this data? Will the UN agencies that used these claims to justify pushing abortion access on developing nations walk any of it back?

 

The Moral Argument Was Always Primary

 

In this moment of scientific vindication it must be stated that the pro-life position was never contingent on this data because the sanctity of human life in the womb isn’t a position that rises or falls on maternal mortality statistics. A child in the womb is a human being with inherent dignity, that is a moral truth. We should be clear about that, even as we rightfully celebrate what this study has found.

 

But the pro-abortion movement chose to fight this battle on medical and empirical grounds. They chose to claim that the science was on their side. They chose to assert that pro-life laws were a public health emergency, and now the peer-reviewed literature (published in their own journals, by their own standards of evidence) has refuted that claim.

 

We didn’t come to this fight looking for a scientific argument but we should absolutely use the one they just handed us!

 

Truth is ultimately self-vindicating, and whilst it takes time, it doesn’t need our protection. But what it does need is our willingness to speak it, to defend it, and to refuse to be silenced when it is inconvenient for the powerful.

 

This is a moment to share this study, cite it in conversations, and to send it to your representatives. The data is there. The argument is ours to make.

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