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CV NEWS FEED // A columnist at National Review has pushed back against recent claims that Texas’ pro-life laws are responsible for a rise in sepsis cases, arguing in a Feb. 24 article that the data cited is misleading and lacks proper context.
ProPublica recently published an article alleging that the Texas Heartbeat Act, which took effect in 2021, led to a 50% increase in sepsis cases among women hospitalized for second-trimester pregnancy losses. The publication reported its findings after purchasing seven years’ worth of Texas hospital-discharge data.
The article received widespread and “uncritical” coverage from numerous media outlets, according to National Review columnist Michael J. New.
“Texas has become a leader in enacting pro-life policies,” New wrote. “It is unsurprising that pro-abortion researchers and their allies in the media have worked overtime to try to gather evidence of a public health crisis in the Lone Star State.”
New, a professor at Catholic University of America and senior associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, argued that the ProPublica article overstates the data’s significance. Taken at face value, the data shows an annual increase of only 28 sepsis cases after the Texas Heartbeat Act took effect.
“Sepsis is a serious issue, but an annual increase of 28 cases should not be blown out of proportion, considering that there are over 31 million people living in Texas and close to 400,000 children born in Texas every year,” New wrote.
New also pointed out that ProPublica’s data only focused on sepsis cases involving pregnancy losses between 13 and 21 weeks’ gestation, a relatively small subset of pregnancies. He argued that presenting the sepsis rate without this context creates a misleading impression.
Additionally, New cited research from the Journal of the American Medical Association indicating that pro-life laws have led to higher birth rates among African-American and Hispanic women, two demographic groups with above-average sepsis rates. This demographic shift, he suggested, could be skewing the results.
Further challenging ProPublica’s narrative, New noted that the article failed to mention its own finding that second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations declined by 9.3 percent after the Texas Heartbeat Act took effect. Although the article referenced an increase in maternal mortality in Texas during 2021, New pointed out that maternal mortality rates in the state significantly declined in 2022 — when even stronger pro-life laws were in place.
New concluded, “This latest ProPublica article is just the latest effort by pro-abortion researchers to spin cherrypicked data into a public health crisis.”
