The Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee revealed this week that it will not be reviewing any cases that occurred over the last two years — which just happen to be the years when Texas's strict anti-abortion law went into effect.
The Washington Post reports that the move by the committee is "leaving any potential deaths related to abortion bans during those years uninvestigated."
The board's decision has led to some internal dissent, as the Post spoke with some anonymous board members who were worried about the precedent being set by the decision.
"If women are dying because of delays, and we have this huge new policy in Texas that affects their lives, why would we skip over those years?” said one board member. "I'm worried."
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The members interviewed by the Post said, however, that they had not "heard anything to suggest that the decision was an attempt to cover up potential deaths related to abortion bans" and they said that the committee had skipped years in the past.
However, the Post writes that maternal deaths in the wake of the abortion ban have become a political football in recent years that makes the optics of such a decision difficult to ignore.
"In the more than two years since Roe v. Wade was overturned, many stories have surfaced in the media of women with high-risk pregnancy complications being denied care because of new abortion laws — situations that have left some in critical condition and resulted in at least five deaths," writes the Post.
"While all abortion bans include some version of an exception for the life or health of the mother, doctors say those exceptions are overly vague and hard to interpret in a high-stakes emergency-room setting when decisions must be made quickly."