(LifeSiteNews) — A new study published last week by JAMA Network Open revealed that despite a torrent of press propaganda claiming that pro-life protections threaten the lives of women, maternal mortality rates are actually falling in states that passed strong pro-life laws.

In Texas, for example, the maternal mortality rate fell by 2.4% since the Heartbeat Act passed in 2021; the study found that other states with strong pro-life laws saw a 3.3% drop in maternal mortality.

“The study was comprehensive and methodologically rigorous,” wrote Dr. Michael New, a statistician and senior associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute. “The authors calculated quarterly maternal mortality rates for all 50 states and Washington, D.C., for the years between 2018 and 2023. Overall, they considered over 22 million births and over 12,000 pregnancy-related deaths.”

“When trends were held constant, states with strong pro-life laws on average actually experienced slightly faster declines in maternal mortality than states with permissive abortion policies.” Conversely, a 2025 study revealed that nearly 11% of women who took the abortion pill experienced complications.

The mainstream press has relentlessly pushed the narrative that pro-life protections for preborn children harm women; a long essay making that case was published just days ago, although it did not mention the JAMA study. The goal is to present the public with a false choice: You can protect preborn children in the womb, or you can protect women — but not both.

That is not the case. The JAMA study, Dr. New noted, “compared maternal mortality rate trends in each of the 14 states that enacted either a heartbeat law or an abortion ban to the cohort of states where abortion remained legal. The results were interesting. Not one of these 14 states experienced a maternal mortality rate increase that was statistically significant.”

Indeed, New noted that in order to make the case that pro-life laws are dangerous for women (while ignoring the presence of preborn human beings altogether), abortion activists have “amplified a Gender Equity Policy Institute analysis that was not peer reviewed and largely focused on a few datapoints from Texas.” The new study actually reviewed data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

“No state with a strong pro-life law experienced a statistically significant increase it is maternal mortality rate,” Dr. New told LifeSiteNews by email. “When trends were held constant, states with strong pro-life laws on average actually experienced slightly faster declines in maternal mortality than states with permissive abortion policies.”

Contra the claims of abortion activists, there is much additional evidence that pro-life laws do not harm women. Malta, which is the only EU country where the preborn are still entirely protected under law, has some of the best maternal health care in Europe and a very low maternal mortality rate. As of 2023, Malta’s pro-life regime had resulted in zero maternal mortalities in a decade.

In Poland, where pro-life laws are under attack by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, has a significantly lower maternal mortality rate than European countries with legal abortion (one of the lowest on the continent); pre-2018 Ireland had a lower maternal mortality rate than England, Scotland, and Wales, where abortion was legal.

In 2020, Poland — where abortion is almost entirely illegal — had a Maternal Mortality Rate of approximately 2 deaths per 100,000 live births. The EU average is 8. In 2017, before abortion was legal, Ireland had an MMR of 6 deaths per 100,000 live births; in 2022, it had already risen to 7.

Abortion activists are lying about pro-life protections, and this new study is just the latest evidence.