[The following is a guest post published in Sarah Terzo’s Secular Seamless Garment, Substack, on April 8, 2026. Rachel MacNair is a director of the Institute for Integrated Social Analysis, the research arm of the Consistent Life Network. Reprinted with the author’s permission.]

I had just turned 14 when Roe v. Wade came down. I reacted positively—it would get rid of back-alley butchers. Soon I realized it actually put a back-alley butcher back in business. The problem wasn’t the legal nature of abortion, but the nature of abortion, period.

There were arguments before Dobbs that abortion bans wouldn’t have dire back-alley impacts that we didn’t already have before. But now we don’t have to speculate about what would happen. We can observe what did happen.

I commented right after Dobbs that we were about to have a “natural experiment”—unlike a lab experiment, it’s not set up on purpose, but it’s still set up, so we can collect data. My post’s first section made predictions on women’s deaths. I document below that my predictions were just about right.

ProPublica has been chomping at the bit to show abortion bans have deadly consequences for women. It won a 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its coverage. If abortion bans are deadly for women, that would be alarming to those of us advocating for them. So—is it true?

ProPublica List (to date, April 2026; in chronological order by death date)

Name Date of Death	Condition	Malpractice?
Josselli Barnica 09.07.2021	wanted pregnancy. miscarriage	delayed antibiotics for sepsis, etc.
Amber Thurman 08.19.2022	legal abortion	delayed D&C at emergency visit 5 days later
Candi Miller 11.12.2022	abortion pill from online	from the online source, sloppiness
Porsha Ngumezi 06.11.2023	natural miscarriage	delayed, treated with misoprostol when should have been D&C
Nevaeh Craine 10.29.2023	wanted pregnancy, infection	two hospitals and three visits, ignored symptoms

Name Date of Death

Condition

Malpractice?

Tierra Walker

12.26.2024

difficult pregnancy

several ways of not

following protocols

Josselli Barnica

• ProPublica: “A Woman Died After Being Told It Would Be a ‘Crime’ to Intervene in Her Miscarriage at a Texas Hospital.”

• Secular Pro-Life Video: Does Texas require doctors to wait until there’s no heartbeat to intervene in emergencies? (Josseli Barnica)

Before Dobbs, with a Texas abortion ban, Jossselli had a wanted pregnancy but suffered a miscarriage at 17 weeks. They delayed intervention until there was no heartbeat, citing the Texas heartbeat law. Unlike the following cases, ProPublica had the word of the medical team. They misinterpreted the law; the remedy is to educate doctors on this.

After the D&C was finally done, doctors didn’t confirm the fetal parts were all removed and sent her home with them still inside her. She got an infection. It caused her death. The doctors should have taken her concern seriously when she reported symptoms. There’s certainly no abortion ban that keeps doctors from properly monitoring and treating an infection.

Amber Nicole Thurman

• ProPublica: Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care

• Secular Pro-Life: Georgia Woman Dies After Delayed Treatment of Abortion Pill Complications (Amber Thurman)

• LifeNews.com: Leading OBGYN Believes Woman Died From Abortion Pill, Not Pro-Life Law

Amber was a Georgia resident, past the state’s gestational limit. She went to North Carolina to get the abortion pill regimen. Returning to Georgia, five days later, she had complications. The doctors discussed but didn’t do a clearly-indicated D&C to remove fetal remains. Since the twins were already dead, there was no legal issue. ProPublica attributed this delay to doctors’ fears of the Georgia heartbeat law, with-out asking them what the reason for delay was.

Candi Miller

• ProPublica: Candi Miller Died Afraid to Seek Care Amid Georgia’s Abortion Ban

• LifeNews.com: Candi Miller Died From the Abortion Pill, Not From an Abortion Ban

This involved an online order of abortion pills. Of course, that’s dangerous. No check for ectopic pregnancy, which the pill wouldn’t treat? No check for negative blood type to see if she needs a Rho-gam shot? Those who argue it shouldn’t be banned should at least insist on better regulation and monitoring.

Porsha Ngumezi

• ProPublica: A Third Woman Died Under Texas’ Abortion Ban

• Secular Pro-Life: ProPublica tries again: responding to claims about Porsha Ngumezi’s death

Porsha Ngumezi bled heavily from a miscarriage and went to the emergency room. She wasn’t seen for seven hours and then was given misoprostol instead of a proper D&C. After she died, the doctor’s notes claim her bleeding was minimal, contradicting nurses’ notes. Delaying the D&C for fear of the abortion ban? Administering misoprostol would also be against that ban.

Nevaeh Craine

• ProPublica: A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Vis-its to Texas Emergency Rooms

• Secular Pro-Life: Nevaeh Craine’s family says her death is being used for politics

• and ProPublica can’t see malpractice, only abortion bans (Nevaeh Craine)

LifeNews.com: Nevaeh Craine Died Because of Poor Medical Care, Not From an Abortion Ban and Nevaeah Craine’s Family Blame Hospitals for Her Death, Not Texas Abortion Ban

Nevaeh was happily 6 months pregnant. With symptoms of infection, she made three different visits to two different emergency rooms and couldn’t get them to take her reports of symptoms seriously.

Tierra Walker

• ProPublica: In Texas, Tierra Walker Wasn’t Offered an Abortion Before a High-risk Pregnancy Killed Her

• Secular Pro-Life: Interview with Dr. Christina Francis regarding the case of Tierra Walker

• LifeNews.com: Abortion Activists Exploit Pregnant Woman’s Tragic Death to Lie About Abortion Bans

Tierra had a high-risk pregnancy and so should have received better coordinated care than she did. ProPublica claims that at 20 weeks, she asked about terminating and was turned down.

But at 20 weeks, terminating a high-risk pregnancy has its own medical risks. It’s not like getting rid of the pregnancy gets rid of the risk. So doctors’ judgment on the medical issue alone may have been correct. What we do know suggests that the medical risk management could have been better coordinated.

Not on the List Because There Was No Ban to Blame

Alexis Aguellos died February 6, 2025, from an amniotic fluid embolism as a complication of a 22-week abortion at Fort Collins Planned Parenthood. State leg-islature testimony, heard in the video clip below,* shows the ambulance was called much later than it should have been.

This fits the pattern of the Roe era. Abortion-related deaths were only kept track of by pro-life groups (see lists from Feminists for Life, Students for Life, and Oper-ation Rescue). Women’s deaths from abortions when there’s no ban don’t count in “pro-choice” eyes. Literally—they don’t count them.

Baseline

Here are the most recent numbers on abortion-related women’s deaths from the Centers for Disease Control when Roe was reigning:

	types of abortion
	induced
year	leagal	illegal	unknown

The Human Life Review

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