What: Johns Hopkins interviews Profs. Alison Gemmill and Suzanne Bell, the researchers who found that infant deaths increased after Texas banned abortion. The conversation digs into the nuance of the study’s findings, and what the scientists are looking at next: maternal mortality and severe complications of pregnancy.

Key line: “One thing I want to highlight: With our infant mortality findings, we found an increase in the infant mortality rate due to congenital anomalies. But what struck me was that we also found an increase in deaths due to noncongenital anomalies, caused by things like maternal complications, but also potentially infant accidents and infant suffocation. We were a bit restricted in the way that we could analyze those other causes of death, because it’s such a rare outcome. It’s not just a story about congenital anomalies or defects. There’s a larger story there about negative spillover effects happening to both mothers and their babies—that’s something that we hope to disentangle in the next year.”

Source: Johns Hopkins