The U.S. maternal mortality rate has dropped 19.7% since the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to enact protective pro-life laws protecting babies from abortions. That’s according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
In 2022, the year of the ruling overturning Roe and states instituting the first abortion bans, the rate was 22.3 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.
By 2024, the most recent year with complete figures and 20 states banning abortions to some degree, it had fallen to 17.9 per 100,000 live births.
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The decline continues a downward trend first reported last year, when CDC figures showed a 17% drop from 2022 to 2023, reaching 18.6 per 100,000 live births. Provisional early 2024 data hovered near the 17.9 level, returning rates to pre-pandemic figures after a COVID-driven spike in 2021.The improvement flatly contradicts repeated warnings from abortion advocates that protective pro-life laws would trigger a maternal health crisis by forcing women to carry high-risk pregnancies to term.
“Supporters of legal abortion are entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts. Data from the CDC and other sources show that many public health metrics have improved since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision,” one recent analysis stated.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, “maternal mortality has not only failed to rise, it has fallen, sharply and consistently,” according to reporting on the CDC numbers. “Maternal deaths did not rise once protective pro-life laws were enacted. The fact is, they fell.”
The Dobbs-era data also show infant mortality falling 3.3% from 5.60 per 1,000 live births in 2022 to 5.41 in the third quarter of 2025, further contradicting claims of worsening public health outcomes in states with abortion bans.
The drop coincides with broader improvements in maternal health systems, including extended postpartum coverage in some states and investments in perinatal care. Nearly 80% of maternal deaths remain preventable, the CDC has said, with leading causes including cardiovascular conditions, hypertension and infection.
Critics of abortion have long argued that abortion itself carries greater long-term risks than having a baby.
A population study in Quebec found women who had abortions faced a 50% increased risk of premature death that persisted for about 15 years, including higher rates of suicide, sepsis, cardiovascular disease and renal failure.
“The best available evidence, from the best record-based studies shows that abortion is an independent risk factor for a 50% higher rate of death than for women who carry to term,” said David Reardon, a researcher who has analyzed abortion mortality data.
Reardon and others have noted that abortion-related deaths are underreported because reporting is voluntary and lacks linkage to death certificates or registries, unlike comprehensive CDC tracking of maternal deaths from childbirth.
Pro-life advocates say the numbers reflect real lives saved and underscore that protecting unborn children does not endanger mothers.
“None of that requires ending life in the womb. All of it demands a serious commitment to life outside of it,” one analysis concluded.
