A Texas committee tasked with reviewing the deaths of pregnant patients will begin looking at cases from 2024 at its meeting on Dec. 6. This means deaths in 2022 and 2023, the first two years after Texas’ abortion ban was put in place, will not be investigated.
Dr. Carla Ortique, chair of the Texas Maternal Mortality Committee, said the “leapfrog” to the current year's case load is a standard practice because the extensive nature of the committee’s investigations can result in multiyear backlogs. By jumping forward to 2024, the committee aims to remain “contemporary” in its policy recommendations, Ortique said.
The announcement has been met with skepticism by advocates for reproductive rights and abortion access, who believe that by skipping the years immediately following the implementation of Texas’ abortion ban, the committee could be overlooking direct impacts of the ban on maternal mortality.
“It raises an enormous red flag that the committee does not want to face the true facts regarding the way that these abortion bans have affected pregnant people in Texas,” Dr. Austin Dennard, a Dallas-based OB-GYN, told the Observer. “I don't disagree that it takes a lot of energy to review these cases, but they're important to review. And any scientific person or anyone in medicine will tell you that we learn from data, we learn from research, and these retrospective cases are enormously important. … If we don't have data, we're just presuming that [the rise in maternal mortality is] related directly to these abortion bans.”
Earlier this year, an analysis by the Gender Equity Policy Institute found that between 2019 and 2022, Texas’ maternal mortality rate rose by 56% compared to an 11% raise nationally. Texas’ first abortion ban, which outlawed abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, went into effect in late 2021; when Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022 with the Dobbs decision, the state’s current, near-total ban went into effect. Some studies point to the abortion ban as a clear contributor to the rise in maternal deaths, although other experts believe COVID-19 could have impacted the data as well.
The committee does not investigate deaths that may have occurred while a woman was attempting to receive an abortion, but it does examine cases where miscarriage or pregnancy complications result in the mother’s death. Reporting by ProPublica has found that since Texas’ ban went into effect, at least three Texas women have died after experiencing delays in care for complications of wanted pregnancies; in each instance, confusion or fear surrounding the state's abortion ban may have impacted the women’s care, ProPublica reports.
In an anonymous conversation with the Washington Post, one committee member stated they were “worried” about the decision not to further investigate the years directly following the ban.
“If women are dying because of delays, and we have this huge new policy in Texas that affects their lives, why would we skip over those years?” the committee member asked.
Nearly every state has a Maternal Mortality Committee, but the committee’s roles have shifted or been challenged in some states in the post-Dobbs era. In Georgia, officials dismissed every member of the Maternal Mortality panel after ProPublica obtained information surrounding the deaths of two women that could be linked to the state’s abortion ban. In 2023, Idaho became the first state to completely dissolve their committee.
On Monday, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas posted a warning on social media that the actions of Maternal Mortality Committees in Texas and Georgia are a part of a larger conspiracy to “block the review and release” of information relating to the state’s abortion bans.
“The GOP knows the stories of pregnant women dying preventable deaths sounds bad,” Crockett said. “So they're making sure you never hear about them.”
“Propagating Misinformation”
This is only the most recent controversy that the committee has faced in recent months.
Earlier this year, Dr. Ingrid Skop, an OB-GYN and national anti-abortion advocate, was appointed to the Texas Maternal Mortality Committee. Skop was one of the doctors who sued to revoke the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, a common abortion-inducing drug. The case was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court this summer.
Skop is also commonly called on by GOP legislators to testify against abortion access, and she signed a sworn affidavit stating that Dallas native Kate Cox, who notably left the state to receive an abortion in 2023, did not qualify for a medical abortion under the state’s exception policy.
“For over 30 years, I have advocated for both of my patients, a pregnant woman and her unborn child, and excellent medicine shouldn’t require that I pit one against the other,” Skop said in a statement following her placement on the committee.
Texas and Georgia are blocking the review and release of information on the deaths of pregnant women from abortion bans.
— Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (@RepJasmine) December 3, 2024
The GOP knows the stories of pregnant women dying preventable deaths sounds bad. So they're making sure you never hear about them. https://t.co/VBrbLTU3C4
Dennard was “extremely disappointed, but not surprised” by the committee’s appointment of Skop, who she believes is guilty of "propagating misinformation.” While she tries not to be “cynical” about the state of her profession, Dennard has firsthand experience seeing what it takes to circumnavigate Texas’ abortion ban as a pregnant woman.
In 2022, Dennard was forced to leave the state to receive an abortion after her fetus was diagnosed with a deadly condition; although her child’s skull would never form, her life was not threatened by the pregnancy so an abortion was not legal under Texas state law. Following her abortion, Dennard was one of 20 women named in the Zurawski v. Texas lawsuit that urged the state to clarify language in the ban to better serve women undergoing pregnancy complications. The case was struck down by the Texas Supreme Court in May.
Last month, Dennard was one of 110 Texas OB-GYNs who signed a letter urging lawmakers to reevaluate the state’s approach to abortion legislation.
“If we think we are going to get answers from the Texas Medical Board, we clearly are not. If we think we are going to get the answers from the Maternal Mortality Committee, we clearly are not,” Dennard said. “So it is now time for physicians to take off their white coats, leave the office and go have really, really frank conversations with our hospital lawyers and with our own departments to provide safety for our patients.”
