In states banning abortion, doctors are withholding life-saving care from pregnant patients out of fear of prosecution, putting women’s lives at risk.
We know the names of nine women (thanks to the work of investigative journalists at ProPublica, The New Yorker and others) who have died after doctors denied them life-saving care because of fears they would be criminally prosecuted under abortion bans: Josseli Barnica, Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, Amber Nicole Thurman, Candi Miller, Porsha Ngumezi, Taysha Wilkinson-Sobieski, Nevaeh Crain, Tierra Walker and Ciji Graham.
In states where abortion is banned, some pregnant women have died from severe bleeding or untreated infections, later found by medical examiners to still have fetal tissue remaining in their bodies. In one case, a fearful doctor told a nurse that “offering a helping hand to a patient getting onto the gurney while in the throes of a miscarriage could be construed as ‘aiding and abetting an abortion.’ Best not to so much as touch the patient who is miscarrying…”
At least three least three more women—all unnamed at this time—died between October 2022 and July 2024 as a result of denied or delayed emergency abortion care, according to a March 2025 study released in academic journal CHEST, led by researcher Katrina Hauschildt, and based on the testimony of 29 doctors cross 15 abortion ban states treating critically ill pregnant patients.
In all, public health experts estimate that abortion bans have led to the deaths of at least 59 women—but we may never know their names. States with abortion bans have disbanded their maternal mortality committees so no one finds out about these deaths, then reconstituted them with antiabortion advocates. Texas’ committee has flat-out refused to review deaths that are considered abortion ban-related.
What states with abortion bans cannot hide is their strikingly higher maternal mortality and morbidity rates.
- Maternal mortality rates in Texas rose 56 percent in the first year the state banned abortion.
- Women living in states banning abortion were nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth or soon after giving birth compared to women living in states where abortion was legal and accessible.
In addition to denying life-saving care, doctors are putting women’s braindead bodies on ventilators to use them as incubators for embryos for long months. After harvesting severely premature babies from their decaying wombs, their corpses are disconnected from ventilators. Doctors have done this to the dead bodies of at least 35 women in the United States, including:
- Adriana Smith of Georgia: Smith was nine weeks pregnant when she died in February 2025, but doctors ventilated her corpse for four months. In June, doctors sliced open her body to harvest a severely premature, one-pound fetus.
- Marlise Muñoz of Texas: Doctors put a braindead woman named on a ventilator to gestate a 14-week-old fetus. Her husband and parents watched her body rot for 62 days before they finally won a lawsuit forcing doctors to detach the ventilator from Muñoz’s body.
Doctors have also used abortion bans to force women to carry dead fetuses: In Texas, when Marlena Stell went to the hospital miscarrying a pregnancy, doctors delayed necessary medical care for two weeks because of the Texas abortion ban. “I felt like a walking coffin,” said Stell.
The harms of abortion bans fall heavily on women who are carrying wanted pregnancies to term, but experience health complications and are being denied care.
In a lawsuit involving denial of emergency care to pregnant women, the National Women’s Law Center filed a brief documenting more than 100 cases of women almost dying when hospitals denied emergency medical care because of abortion bans—though “the true number [of cases] is likely significantly higher,” according to the brief.
One case involved a woman named Mylissa Farmer, who experienced preterm premature rupture of membranes, when the amniotic sac breaks prior to viability. Rather than treat her by terminating her pregnancy, she was denied the emergency abortion care she needed—first by her local hospital in Missouri, then by a hospital in Kansas. Doctors at both hospitals told Farmer her fetus could not survive and continuing her pregnancy would put her at risk of serious infection, hemorrhaging, the loss of her uterus and even death. Still, both hospitals refused to end her pregnancy because of abortion restrictions in those states. With her health deteriorating rapidly, Farmer and her partner drove more than four hours to an Illinois abortion clinic while she was in labor.
Abortion bans harm women, causing death and trauma to pregnant women.
As the November midterm elections near, the stakes for federal reproductive healthcare policy are clear. Congress should move to pass two critical protections:
- The Women’s Health Protection Act would establish a statutory right for healthcare providers to offer abortion services and for patients to receive them, free from restrictions that single out abortion care. The bill has been introduced in multiple Congresses and has passed the House before, but it has not become law because it failed to clear the Senate in earlier rounds.
- The Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance (EACH) Act would ensure that every person who receives healthcare or insurance through the federal government will have coverage for abortion services, and prohibit political interference with decisions by private health insurance companies to offer coverage for abortion care. The bill has been reintroduced multiple times and has been backed by lawmakers including Barbara Lee, Diana DeGette, Jan Schakowsky, Ayanna Pressley, Tammy Duckworth and Mazie Hirono.
These laws will decrease the appallingly high and rising maternal mortality rate in the United States—and save women’s lives, health and dignity.
This op-ed was originally published by the Daily Hampshire Gazette:
