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A group of the nation’s leading maternal health doctors is threatening legal action against the Texas Department of Health and Human Services over its delayed release of a long-awaited report on pregnancy-related illnesses.
The report, which will include the state’s first maternal mortality statistics in nearly a decade, will also examine the causes of higher mortality rates among Black mothers. released under the law on Sept. 1. Health officials said it would take until next summer. They concluded their analysis, pushing the release ahead of next week’s hotly contested elections and the looming state legislature.
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In a letter released late Friday, lawyers for the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine asked the health department to release its findings by Nov. 10, saying it is holding vital information for its 5,500 members, including nearly 450 physicians in Texas. It was noted that the agency has published reports with preliminary findings that will be updated later, like the previous report on birth defects, in 2020. However, that report relied on data from 2013.
“If you continue to maintain an Affiliate Report that violates Texas law, SMFM will consider all available options, including seeking legal remedies, to compel disclosure,” write lawyers with the Democracy Forward Foundation, representing the physician group. The letter was also sent to the state’s Death and Morbidity Review Committee, which reviews and makes recommendations for improving pregnancy-related health outcomes.
Skye Perryman, a lawyer representing Democracy Forward, said it was “shocking” that the agency has delayed the report, despite requests in recent weeks from health advocates and lawmakers. Democratic law to publish.
“There is no discretion in the law, and there is no place where the government has the power to not comply with the law,” Perryman said. “So we’re very concerned about what we’re seeing here and the broader pattern and concerns about women’s and maternal health in Texas.”
The group of doctors supports abortion access and strongly opposes the abortion ban enacted by Texas and other states this year after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
A health department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a recent legal hearing, Commissioner John Hellerstedt of the Department of Public Health Services expressed concerns about releasing parts of the study before it was completed.
“The information we provide is not easily understood, it is not easy and simple to compare with what is available in other countries,” Hellerstedt said. “Because it’s not easily understood or easily compared in my mind it leaves room for a lot of misunderstanding about what the data means.”
jeremy.blackman@chron.com
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