Exclusive analysis finds the rate of maternal deaths in Texas increased 56% from 2019 to 2022, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same time period.
What is going on here? The laws came into place in September 2021, but mortality was already climbing from 2019-2021. What was going on those years to cause this? Then a sharp decline in mortality between 2021 and 2022 for two of the three groups.
I really wish the article talked about those years rather than just comparing 2019 to 2022, given that 2022 is a drop compared to 2021. Or if the article had showed the same chart with national data of those same years 2019-2022 for a good compare and contrast visual to show the national mortality rate climb and then post-Covid drop. As it is, the law goes into place and then mortality rate drops, which could easily be a talking point in its favor, even if it may be a deceptive point. By not addressing that, and instead glossing over the article seems incomplete.
Lockdown - domestic violence peaked during those years as well. Abusive men often use birth/pregnancy to abuse their partners, because they feel like their partner is obligated to be with them now that they share a child. There can also be some jealousy issues from the man towards the baby or the wife, since they get special treatment especially during pregnancy and right after.
So you'll see more stuff like deliberate poisoning (including sneakily feeding foods unsafe for pregnant women), beatings, rape. They will also delay or deny medical treatment.
Oh actually, that's probably a big reason too - people stopped going to the doctor during those years because we were told not to. It was too busy and overwhelmed. We were told you'd get covid and miscarry if you went in to the doctor also. Prenatal care is HUGE for preventing deaths during birth. My guess is a combo of factors.
The comment I replied to said the spike was due to woman's programs being defunded. I don't know if it was that, or covid, or something else. Right now it appears everyone is speculating the reason. Some detail, specifically some from the article would have been helpful. In its face, the article is blaming a 2021 law for a rise in mortality between 2019-2022, despite the mortality rate declining overall after the law went into effect. I don't think that's the whole story, but the article seems to gloss over it.
According to the cdc website pretty much everywhere in the u.s. went up during 2020-2021 and things started coming down 2022-2023. In fact it looks like the average across the u.s. was pretty much back to “normal” by 2023. But what we see here is that while things declined again for TX in 2022, they still remain quite elevated above 2019 while the u.s. average went back to pre-pandemic average, which would tell me that something else is going on in TX unrelated to the pandemic.
For a more interesting question, why did it go down for everyone except white women, and increased for white women? That's weird enough that it feels like there's a reason, but I have no clue what it might be.
This graph is useless without a source. We don't know how the data was collected or how many data points are included (or discarded). This is probably just lying with statistics 101.