What is going on here? The laws came into place in September 2021, but mortality was already climbing from 2019-2021. What was going on those years to cause this? Then a sharp decline in mortality between 2021 and 2022 for two of the three groups.
I really wish the article talked about those years rather than just comparing 2019 to 2022, given that 2022 is a drop compared to 2021. Or if the article had showed the same chart with national data of those same years 2019-2022 for a good compare and contrast visual to show the national mortality rate climb and then post-Covid drop. As it is, the law goes into place and then mortality rate drops, which could easily be a talking point in its favor, even if it may be a deceptive point. By not addressing that, and instead glossing over the article seems incomplete.
Lockdown - domestic violence peaked during those years as well. Abusive men often use birth/pregnancy to abuse their partners, because they feel like their partner is obligated to be with them now that they share a child. There can also be some jealousy issues from the man towards the baby or the wife, since they get special treatment especially during pregnancy and right after.
So you’ll see more stuff like deliberate poisoning (including sneakily feeding foods unsafe for pregnant women), beatings, rape. They will also delay or deny medical treatment.
Oh actually, that’s probably a big reason too - people stopped going to the doctor during those years because we were told not to. It was too busy and overwhelmed. We were told you’d get covid and miscarry if you went in to the doctor also. Prenatal care is HUGE for preventing deaths during birth. My guess is a combo of factors.
You’d be delusional to think there wasn’t. Everybody was cooped up and stir crazy. Nobody was seeing friends, coworkers, teachers etc face-to-face. Ya know. People who would notice a black eye or a bruised arm. Possibly even mandatory reporters.
Not to mention that one of the first things most prenatal care centers will do (at least any decent one) is take the woman into another room, without her partner, and ask if they are safe. That doesn’t work so well over a telehealth appointment.
Abuse absolutely went up. The lowest estimates I’d seen were like 8%. Pregnant women can only fall down so many flights of stairs before fetuses start dying.
It’s well known, like really widely reported and known, that abuse towards children and partners went up during the pandemic. It’s also well documented that abusers use pregnancy to amp up their abuse. But you know, if you had done the basics to look this up before you commented, you wouldn’t have been able to call me delusional (misogynistic insult). Here, my girl brain did it for you, since it was too hard for you:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11345045/
Covid-19 created circumstances and measures that increased the risk and incidence of DV/IPV in pregnant women, which led to a higher prevalence of the phenomenon.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9582712/
Incidents of domestic violence increased in response to stay-at-home/lockdown orders, a finding that is based on several studies from different cities, states, and several countries around the world.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, emerging data and reports from those on the front lines, have shown that all types of violence against women and girls, particularly domestic violence, has intensified.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_on_domestic_violence
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries reported an increase in domestic violence and intimate partner violence.[1] United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, noting the “horrifying global surge”, called for a domestic violence “ceasefire”.[2][3] UN Women stated that COVID-19 created “conditions for abuse that are ideal for abusers because it forced people into lockdown” thus causing a “shadow pandemic” that exacerbated preexisting issues with domestic violence globally.
The researchers noted the decrease in reported domestic violence contrasted with increases in reported firearm domestic violence.
They point out that the results may reflect a decrease in reporting due to barriers from the pandemic rather than an actual decrease in domestic violence. For example, during the lockdown, it may have been harder for those experiencing domestic violence to report to law enforcement because they were confined with a perpetrator who was monitoring their communications.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10378456/
The increase in cases of IVP against pregnant women during the pandemic was striking, according to the current study
Defunding of women’s health programs such as planned parenthood started long before the actual ban
According to the cdc website pretty much everywhere in the u.s. went up during 2020-2021 and things started coming down 2022-2023. In fact it looks like the average across the u.s. was pretty much back to “normal” by 2023. But what we see here is that while things declined again for TX in 2022, they still remain quite elevated above 2019 while the u.s. average went back to pre-pandemic average, which would tell me that something else is going on in TX unrelated to the pandemic.
This graph is useless without a source. We don’t know how the data was collected or how many data points are included (or discarded). This is probably just lying with statistics 101.
