Abortion-Ban States Provide Worse Health Care To Pregnant Women, Study Says

Key Takeaways

• Pregnant women have worse health care in states that ban or restrict abortion

• They are more often uninsured and have less access to routine medical care

• Stingy Medicaid programs explain most of this link, researchers say

WEDNESDAY, June 11, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Pregnant women are more likely to have poorer health care in states that ban or restrict abortion, a new study says.

Expectant mothers are more often uninsured and have less access to routine medical care in those states, researchers reported in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

This is mainly due to abortion-ban states’ stingy Medicaid programs, researchers say.

“Many state governments are coercing women into continuing unwanted pregnancies, yet also maintain barriers that keep them from getting needed pregnancy care,” lead researcher Dr. Adam Gaffney, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, said in a news release. “These care gaps will get worse if Congress goes ahead with slashing Medicaid.”

For the study, researchers analyzed data on nearly 21,000 pregnant women who participated in an annual health survey led by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state health departments.

The data ran from 2014 to 2022, the year that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion in its Dobbs decision.

Based on the data, researchers estimate that nearly 260,000 pregnant women lacked health coverage in 2022, and 62% lived in abortion-ban states.

The three states with the largest share of pregnant women without coverage were Texas (21%), Arkansas (19%) and Florida (19%) – three states that have banned or heavily restricted abortion.

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Nationwide, pregnant women in abortion ban or restriction states were significantly more likely to be uninsured – 15% versus 10%, results show.

They also were more likely to be unable to afford a doctor (20% versus 13%) and to lack a personal health care provider (29% versus 22%).

Worse access to medical care among pregnant women was almost entirely explained by three Medicaid policies in these states, researchers found:

• Failure to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

• Banning Medicaid coverage for pregnant immigrants who were documented for fewer than five years.

• Setting stringent income thresholds for Medicaid eligibility among pregnant women.

“Politicians in those states claim to care about children and families, but their policies that deny care to pregnant women speak louder than their words,” senior researcher Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor of public health at Hunter College at the City University of New York, said in a news release.

More information

The Center for Reproductive Rights has more about state abortion laws.

SOURCE: Elsevier, news release, June 5, 2025

What This Means For You

Pregnant women in states where abortion is banned or restricted will have a more difficult time obtaining the health care they need, researchers say.