The controversial analysis, which was done by the Commonwealth Fund and released this week, concludes abortion-banning states in the South and in the Midwest show a higher rate of maternal-related deaths than states where abortion is allowed and defended by state law.
Asked to respond to the Commonwealth study, Dr. Randall K. O'Bannon, of the National Right to Life Committee, tells AFN blaming the mortality rates on abortion laws is a false premise.
“They had high maternal mortality rates before Roe v Wade,” he says of those states, “and they have still tended to have them afterward. So it's not necessarily related to anything about the laws.”
It is more likely, says O’Bannon, the real looming issue is overall health care, especially a lack of doctors and a lack of access to good care needed by pregnant women.
In fact, the Commonwealth report cites as evidence a March of Dimes study that mapped maternity care “deserts” in numerous states, where medical services are limited or non-existent at all. Those same “desert” areas presumably lack other health care services, too.
In a map of the “most restrictive” states, the Commonwealth study includes Louisiana and Mississippi, which are sadly known as two of the poorest states with the unhealthiest residents in the nation, both inside and outside the womb.
A second portion of the Commonwealth study also uses its own “health equity scorecard” that concludes the poor, especially minorities, lack health care insurance, health care providers, and preventive care such as flu shots. Somehow, according to the study, that is related to abortion laws in those states.
“There's just nothing really there,” O’Bannon concludes, “and they've given a false illusion of what's going on and what the study has said.”
