Texas abortion ban linked to higher sepsis risk after pregnancy loss

• Abortion rights advocates are meeting in Austin over the weekend to strategize how to amplify personal stories of pregnancy complications in post-Roe America.

The big picture: Texas' ban on most abortions is one of the strictest in the country, but the state hasn't studied the ban's impact on pregnant women experiencing complications, ProPublica reports.

Zoom in: Some women have shared their experiences in lawsuits, news stories and podcasts — including 22 plaintiffs who sued Texas over the ban.

• A North Texas woman said she bled for a week because her hospital declined to give her a D&C after her miscarriage.

Catch up quick: Texas' Senate Bill 8 went into effect in September 2021, banning abortions after about six weeks.

• The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade in 2022, enabling Texas to ban most abortions. Texas physicians may perform an abortion only if the pregnant person's life is at risk or if there is serious risk of impairing a major bodily function.

What they did: ProPublica reporters analyzed thousands of discharge records from 2017 through 2023 and spoke with dozens of researchers and clinicians about their findings.

• They narrowed the data to hospitalizations that resulted in a pregnancy loss in the second trimester.

What they found: Nearly 3% of hospitalizations during a second-trimester pregnancy loss resulted in sepsis during the nine quarters before SB 8 went into effect. The rate increased by 55%, to 4.5%, in the nine quarters after the law went into effect.

• The data showed a "dramatic increase" in sepsis after the law took effect among patients whose fetus may have still had a heartbeat when they were admitted to the hospital and lost their pregnancy.

Stunning stat: 120 women died in 2022 and 2023 while hospitalized during their pregnancy or within six weeks postpartum, per the ProPublica analysis. But it's unclear whether their pregnancy or Texas' abortion ban had a role in their death, ProPublica says.

• The figure also doesn't include patients who died in a hospitalization that was separate from the end of their pregnancy.

The other side: The Texas Department of State Health Services told Axios it tracks maternal deaths and severe maternal morbidity, which includes pregnancy complications and sepsis, but the agency's figures haven't been updated since 2022 and use only hospital delivery data.

• Nearly 73 cases out of every 10,000 delivery hospitalizations resulted in a severe maternal morbidity in 2022. The rate was 67 per 10,000 cases in 2019.
• The rate has historically been significantly higher for Black patients.

Between the lines: A Texas committee tasked by the Legislature to review maternal mortality and morbidity plans to skip full reviews of deaths from 2021 to 2024. Committee members have said they want to be "more contemporary," but Democratic lawmakers and others have criticized their decision.

• "The two years that we were skipping are the most crucial years of reproductive health in this country's history," Nakeenya Wilson, a former committee member, testified in December.
• The rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56% from 2019 to 2022, while the rate rose 11% nationwide, per a 2024 analysis by the Gender Equity Policy Institute.

Zoom out: ProPublica doesn't fully show the impact of Texas' abortion ban on care for pregnant patients because of the limited data available.

• The hospital data didn't show if any patients were turned away instead of being admitted, and the news organization didn't have access to outpatient data.
• "We can only see a small subset of this type of care — specifically, the most severe cases," ProPublica reports.