Most OB-GYNs in new poll say Dobbs ruling worsened pregnancy-related mortality 

Most OB-GYNs said in a new poll that the Dobbs ruling from the Supreme Court last year worsened maternal health care and increased pregnancy-related mortality.

Health policy nonprofit KFF released its new poll Wednesday, and it found that 64 percent of OB-GYNs surveyed believed the June 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade worsened pregnancy-related mortality. Sixty-eight percent also said the decision worsened their ability to treat pregnancy-related emergencies.

Nearly a year ago, the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to an abortion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision and allowed states to make their own policies about the health procedure. This prompted more than a dozen states in the past year to enact all-out abortion bans or laws that banned women from receiving an abortion based on gestational limits.

This comes as pregnancy-related deaths have been rising in the United States since 2019, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report earlier this year. In 2021, there were 32.9 deaths for every 100,000 live births.

The poll also found that half of OB-GYNs in states where abortion is banned said they had patients in their practice unable to receive the care that they wanted. About 4 in 10 OB-GYNs nationally said that their decision-making autonomy has also been negatively affected since the ruling.

After the Dobbs decision, the poll found 1 in 5 office-based OB-GYNs nationally said they are providing abortion services. Nearly 30 percent of OB-GYNs in states where abortion is legal said that they are providing the health service, while 10 percent of OB-GYNs in states where there are gestational limits said they are continuing to provide the care.

On a national scale, 20 percent of OB-GYNs who are office-based said they have felt “constraints” to provide care for miscarriages and other pregnancy-related emergencies. This number significantly increased to 40 percent among OB-GYNs in states where abortion is banned.

Fourteen percent of OB-GYNs nationally said they provide in-person medication abortions, while 5 percent said they provide medication abortions via telehealth. More than half of the OB-GYNs surveyed said they have seen an increase in patients seeking contraception since the Dobbs decision, including long-term or permanent methods like sterilization, IUDs and implants.

The poll also reported 70 percent of OB-GYNs believed the landmark ruling “worsened racial and ethnic inequities in maternal health.” Racial disparities in maternal healthcare already exist due to access to quality health care and racial biases in health care — Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related issue than white women, according to the CDC.

The poll was conducted from March 17 to May 18 among 569 OB-GYNs and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points at the confidence level of 95 percent.