Texas' maternal mortality committee faces backlash for not reviewing deaths from first two years post-Dobbs

At times speaking through tears, mothers, health care providers and community advocates implored Texas’ maternal mortality committee to fully review deaths from the first two years since the state banned nearly all abortions.

At a public meeting Friday, members of the committee defended the decision to skip from 2021 to 2024 as a necessary step to offer more timely recommendations.

“I know that we've always talked about how we want to be as contemporary as possible,” Nakeenya Wilson, a former member of the committee, testified. “What I am concerned about is the fact that the two years that we were skipping are the most crucial years of reproductive health in this country's history.”

Texas banned most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy in September 2021, and in summer 2022, expanded that ban to all abortions from the moment of conception, except to save the life of the pregnant patient.

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/12/06/texas-maternal-mortality-committee-deaths/