Texas is confronting an alarming rise in infant deaths since 2021, with early state numbers pointing to more than a 7 percent jump and hospitals reporting more newborn losses. The trend has sharpened debates over reproductive and perinatal care and helped move a new law that aims to give grieving families more time with infants who die in hospitals. Families, clinicians and researchers say several forces appear to be at work, including more babies born with life‑limiting anomalies, and they argue that both compassion and policy changes will be needed in response.
According to reporting from KXAN, preliminary state data show infant deaths in Texas climbing by more than 7 percent compared with 2021. In an Inside the Investigation segment, KXAN investigative reporter Arezow Doost highlighted the spike and spoke with family advocates and hospital workers who say the early figures are devastating and warrant far closer public‑health scrutiny.
A peer‑reviewed analysis in JAMA Pediatrics found an even steeper jump in 2022. Infant deaths in Texas rose about 12.9 percent from 2021 to 2022, and the researchers estimated roughly 216 excess infant deaths from March through December 2022. The Johns Hopkins‑led study also reported a roughly 23 percent rise in deaths tied to congenital anomalies in Texas, cutting against national patterns. The authors suggested that the trend may reflect people being required to continue pregnancies with lethal fetal diagnoses, while stressing that the analysis does not prove causation and that more work using linked birth‑death records is needed.
Other national coverage and analyses have raised similar alarms, flagging increases in infant mortality in the months after the Dobbs decision and warning that restrictions on pregnancy termination and disruptions to reproductive services could have ripple effects across public health. Reporting in outlets such as STAT and elsewhere has highlighted disproportionate risks to Black and low‑income families and called for expanded maternal and neonatal support systems.
What Everly's Law does
House Bill 37, known as Everly’s Law, creates a Perinatal Bereavement Care Initiative at the Texas Department of State Health Services and requires hospitals with a maternal level of care designation to offer bereavement counseling and any available perinatal bereavement devices to families after a stillbirth or neonatal death, according to the bill text. The law defines a perinatal bereavement device as one that can delay the deterioration of human tissue for up to 72 hours, authorizes training and grants to help hospitals build out bereavement services and sets up a hospital recognition program for facilities that train staff. The statute takes effect September 1, 2025, and directs DSHS to write implementing rules and to prioritize hospitals that care for high‑risk maternal patients; the full bill language is on file in the public record.
How hospitals and families will see it
Under the bill language, hospitals that do not yet have cooling units or other bereavement devices are expected to be first in line for state‑supported equipment and training. Advocacy groups and nonprofits that donate cuddle cots and similar devices say they plan to continue partnering with hospitals to expand access and to help staff learn how to walk families through the earliest days of loss, and manufacturers and nonprofits have already begun outreach in Texas. Clinicians caution, however, that devices alone are not a complete answer and say broader efforts around prenatal screening, specialty‑care referral networks, and social services remain essential.
What researchers and clinicians warn
Many researchers describe what they see as a chain reaction: tighter abortion restrictions alter which pregnancies continue, which can increase the number of infants born with severe anomalies and, in turn, shift neonatal and infant mortality statistics. Clinicians have reported that legal uncertainty after Dobbs created hesitation and delays in care, and experts argue that clearer rules and protections for providers are needed so that medical decisions can focus squarely on a patient’s best interest. Public‑health specialists stress prevention at the same time, including safe sleep education, access to high‑quality prenatal care and targeted support in communities that already experience high infant‑mortality rates, alongside bereavement services once a loss occurs.
Legal context
The JAMA Pediatrics study linked the timing of the rise in Texas infant deaths to SB8, the state’s 2021 law restricting abortion after embryonic cardiac activity, and noted that SB8 did not include an explicit exemption for pregnancies with severe fetal anomalies. Legal scholars say it is difficult to untangle the effects of specific statutes from broader health‑system factors, but the data have reignited arguments in Austin over how to bring state law, clinical practice, and patient welfare into better alignment.
As Everly’s Law moves toward its 2025 start date, state officials and hospitals face the practical work of setting up the new bereavement program while researchers continue to examine statewide data. Journalists and public‑health advocates say they will be watching to see whether the initiative eases some of the harm for grieving families and how the wider policy landscape continues to shape outcomes for newborns and infants in Texas.
