The dangers to women and girls post-Dobbs
10 July 2025
America is dangerous for women, especially those living in red (Republican controlled) states:
1. Abortion bans have made the common experience of first trimester miscarriage far more dangerous. For example, after Texas banned abortion, more women nearly bled to death during miscarriage:
Before states banned abortion, one of the gravest outcomes of early miscarriage could easily be avoided: Doctors could offer a dilation and curettage procedure, which quickly empties the uterus and allows it to close, protecting against a life-threatening hemorrhage.
But because the procedures, known as D&Cs, are also used to end pregnancies, they have gotten tangled up in state legislation that restricts abortion. Reports now abound of doctors hesitating to provide them and women who are bleeding heavily being discharged from emergency rooms without care, only to return in such dire condition that they need blood transfusions to survive. As ProPublica reported last year, one woman died of hemorrhage after 10 hours in a Houston hospital that didn’t perform the procedure.
2. More women in red states are facing criminal charges after their pregnancies ended in miscarriage or stillbirth.
Some women who delivered stillbirths have been convicted of murder or manslaughter based on the hydrostatic lung test, also known as the lung float test, a widely discredited idea dating back centuries that involves putting fetal lungs in a container of water: If they float, the baby must have been born alive, goes the theory. But medical examiners say these tests are deeply flawed and that air can enter the lungs of a stillbirth in many ways. After being sentenced to 30 years in prison on the basis of the lung float test, Moira Akers, of Columbia, Maryland, was this year ordered a new trial.
See also Jessica Valenti’s blog
3. Indiana (a red state) is showing what a reproductive police state looks like. Although Indiana had only 2 abortions in Q1 2025, Indiana maintains a public state registry containing abortion reports and is planning to ramp up “legal compliance monitoring” to ensure that every abortion meets the strict legal criteria for performing them. Information will also be funnelled to the attorney general so he can target specific doctors or clinics.
4. Pregnancy itself is more dangerous in red states.
Mothers living in a state that banned abortion after Dobbs were up to 3x more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after giving birth. In addition, babies born in banned states were 30% more likely to die in their first month of life.
Compared to states where abortion is accessible, states that have banned, are planning to ban, or have otherwise restricted abortion have fewer maternity care providers; more maternity care “deserts”; higher rates of maternal mortality and infant death, especially among women of color; higher overall death rates for women of reproductive age; and greater racial inequities across their health care systems.
5. Red states are systematically denying women access to health care through cuts to Planned Parenthood and Medicaid and other mechanisms.
It is abundantly clear that among our nation’s leaders—in the White House and federal agencies, in Congress and state legislatures, and in the courts—too many simply do not care if women die.
And more of us indeed will die. This is not hyperbole or Sen. Joni Ernst-style conjecture. The United States has entered an era of state-sanctioned deprivation of women’s bodily autonomy that not only deprives girls and women of legal rights—for the first time in history, daughters have fewer freedoms than their mothers and grandmothers enjoyed—but compromises our collective health and well-being.
Fight or leave. That is my advice to women, girls, and those who care about them. Either stay and work to change your state’s laws, or move to a blue state and defend your rights there. Living in red states has become a serious threat to women’s health and lives.
The index to my prior essays (mostly post 5 November 2024) is here.
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