What The Hell America!

Without a national system to track the consequences of abortion bans, preventable deaths are disappearing into the void—by design.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, at least 10 women have died as a direct result of their inability to access healthcare. But this number is only a guess, because there’s no single place that records and tracks these tragedies. And that’s not just an oversight—it’s a choice.

As a data expert who used to work with survivors of sexual violence, I have seen how failures to measure a problem make it easier for those in power to keep harming people without accountability. Data is power, and the legislators—mostly men—driving these decisions don’t want us to see the true impact. We owe it to the women and others affected to make that impact visible.

The Trump administration’s approach to data is intensifying the problem. From scrubbing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention websites to pausing critical public health reports like the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the administration has prioritized politics over transparency. For the first time since 1961, the CDC’s weekly MMWR report, which plays a crucial role in tracking deaths and identifying public health risks, was temporarily silenced under President Donald Trump’s gag orders, allowing bird flu to continue to spread undetected. Weeks into his return, Trump’s administration deleted the first-ever federal database tracking law enforcement misconduct, a tool meant to prevent bad actors from cycling between agencies.

The lack of national tracking for reproductive healthcare data means we don’t have a way to comprehensively measure the impact of abortion bans. In Texas, for example, maternal sepsis rates have risen post-Dobbs, but without consistent reporting, the full scope of the harm remains unknown, making it impossible to tackle this issue as part of a widespread crisis. 

We’ve seen the power of national data collection before. The National Violent Death Reporting System has helped researchers and policymakers understand suicide and homicide trends and develop targeted prevention strategies. The National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System helps track outbreaks of infectious diseases like measles, allowing public health officials to respond quickly to try and prevent the worst outcomes. But when it comes to maternal health and abortion-related complications, those in power have pursued no such infrastructure.

That’s especially galling given the stakes. Women across the country are dying due to complications from pregnancy, unsafe abortions, and untreated health conditions—often made worse by systemic inequities. The maternal mortality rate in the United States is the highest among developed nations, with stark disparities along racial and socioeconomic lines. According to the CDC, Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts.

These statistics capture only part of the picture: Deaths from denied or delayed access to abortion, miscarriages managed without appropriate medical care, and untreated reproductive health conditions often go uncounted.

The lack of data is not just a missed opportunity—it’s a failure of accountability. In states including Texas, Georgia and Idaho, political interference has actively obstructed the analysis of maternal deaths. 

• In Texas, officials have delayed the review of maternal mortality cases from 2022 and 2023, claiming a backlog—sidestepping responsibility for the human consequences of strict abortion laws while the state focuses on prosecuting healthcare providers.
• In Georgia, the Maternal Mortality Review Committee was disbanded after media investigations revealed preventable deaths linked to restrictive abortion policies—two cases that were reviewed by the board.
• Idaho’s maternal mortality board was dissolved in mid-2023, leaving deaths untracked for months until its reconstitution this year.

These actions undermine efforts to understand and address the root causes of maternal deaths, leaving women and families vulnerable to greater harm. 

South Carolina lawmakers are taking this even further. A new bill, HB 4130, would bar doctors from labeling miscarriage treatment as “abortion” in medical records—even when it is one. Yet, the bill still requires reporting it under the state’s abortion tracking system.

This isn’t about medicine; it’s about control.

Beyond technical considerations, the ethics of such a tracking system must be carefully examined. Consent is paramount. Women and families affected by these tragedies should be able to contribute their stories and data voluntarily, rather than being forced to do so. Moreover, the system should be designed to amplify the voices of marginalized communities most affected by these issues. Black, Indigenous and rural women, for example, face unique challenges that need to be highlighted in any analysis of reproductive health disparities.

Privacy isn’t just about keeping information confidential—it’s about who has the power to control and exploit our personal stories.

Without clear data, unsafe abortions increase unnoticed, policy failures remain unchallenged, and disparities in maternal mortality endure unchecked. A collective tracking effort would shine a much-needed spotlight on the consequences of restricted access to reproductive healthcare. Such data could inform public health initiatives, guide legislative reforms, and serve as a powerful tool for advocacy, helping to prevent the next tragedy.

This effort shouldn’t come at the expense of individuals’ privacy and security, especially given that in the post-Roe era, reproductive health data and digital data is increasingly weaponized. Apps tracking menstrual cycles, for example, have faced scrutiny over their risks for users in states with strict abortion laws. Technology companies’ collection of search data, including queries related to pregnancy, raises serious concerns. Some have shown a growing willingness to comply with potential nationwide abortion restrictions. 

States are misusing reproductive health data, too. In Indiana, which has a near-total abortion ban, officials are attempting to publicly release detailed abortion records, including whether a pregnancy resulted from rape or incest—cruelly politicizing survivors’ trauma.

Similarly, Missouri recently introduced a bill that would create a database of pregnant women at risk of getting an abortion. While the bill failed, such efforts intimidate women out of seeking basic pregnancy care.

Data is more than just a collection of information; it’s a part of a person’s story. And privacy isn’t just about keeping information confidential—it’s about who has the power to control and exploit our personal stories.

This chilling reality underscores the need for extreme caution when designing any system that collects sensitive health information. A successful tracking initiative must prioritize anonymization and data security. Individuals’ personal health information should never be identifiable, and data should be aggregated in ways that protect confidentiality while still revealing critical patterns. Additionally, such a system needs to be independent of entities that might exploit the information for political or prosecutorial purposes.

In order to achieve this kind of security, developers must create technical safeguards, and policymakers must make strong legal protections to safeguard sensitive data. Nonprofit organizations and international health bodies, rather than government agencies, may be better positioned to steward this data responsibly.

Crucially, data collection must be paired with meaningful action. Tracking maternal deaths and other tragedies without addressing their root causes risks reducing people’s lived experiences to mere statistics. Policymakers and healthcare providers should commit to using this data to implement tangible, evidence-backed changes, from expanding Medicaid coverage for postpartum care to enacting protections for abortion providers and patients.

Creating a comprehensive system to track deaths related to reproductive health access is no small task, but it is an essential one. The lives lost to preventable causes demand more than our mourning. By turning data into action, we honor those lives and affirm that reproductive healthcare is not a privilege—it is a right.