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More than a dozen ProPublica journalists are working across the country to cover reproductive health in the wake of the abortion ban. We hope to hear from health care providers, families and policy makers. We asked Executive Vice President Alexandra Zayas to explain our reporting process and the ethics that govern it.
It is now clear that state abortion bans have a seismic impact on health care. As intended, they prevent doctors from terminating pregnancies. But they also introduce a dangerous new dynamic for anyone who accidentally becomes pregnant.
Doctors told us they’ve seen colleagues hesitate to treat deadly conditions like preeclampsia and cancer, worried that their attempts to protect their pregnant patients could be interpreted as crimes against the fetus, punishable by prison terms.
Defenders of the abortion ban insist that these doctors are being misled or confused, and that the so-called “life of the mother” exceptions are clear. But even one Republican representative who voted for his state’s ban, himself a physician, told ProPublica that he thought the language was too vague.
In fact, Amber Thurman’s death raises critical questions about the role the abortion ban plays in the decisions doctors make in emergency situations. Suffering from a severe infection, the 28-year-old physician’s assistant and single mother required, with few exceptions, a procedure that is criminalized in Georgia. As his condition worsened at a hospital in suburban Atlanta, doctors arranged to perform the operation, but did not do so until 20 hours after his arrival; by then it was too late. A 10-doctor state board of maternal health experts ruled her death preventable and blamed the delay in care.
The more cases like this we investigate, the more we can do to expose the cracks that women fall through.
ProPublica has a long, successful history of uncovering the causes of maternal abuse. Seven years ago, we devoted a significant portion of our staff to investigating why so many women in the United States were dying from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. We mine past scientific research and hospital data to uncover individual preventable deaths. What specific, fixable errors did Lauren Bloomstein, Shalon Irving and Dacheca Fleurimond run into in the system? What left their babies motherless?
Every loss was a tragedy. But when the people closest to mothers shared what they knew, they revealed lessons for saving the next life and shed light on the causes and consequences of maternal mortality like nothing else.ProPublica’s report on “Lost Mothers” had a huge impact, including a landmark new law to fund the study of maternal deaths and how to prevent them.
Our reports to date suggest that state abortion bans have unintended, deadly consequences. If there are multiple cases, only those closest to the family know the most critical details. For this reason, we have once again dedicated a significant part of our editorial to the investigation of preventable maternal deaths – and that is why we need your help to uncover them so that those who are capable of system change can learn from them.
If you happen to know of a case in which you suspect abortion-related laws played a role, we understand why you might hesitate to tell us. That’s why we want to know more about our reporting process and the ethics that guide it.
We are non-partisan.
We are a nonprofit, independent newsroom and have no partisan agenda to expose these deaths. While we do due diligence on the Republican state governments that passed these bans, we also question what else the Biden administration can do to assess and mitigate the consequences.
Ahead of a hotly contested election in which abortion is on the agenda in 10 states — and on the lips of presidential candidates — we want voters to know how state bans affect the safety of those who become pregnant.
We rely on and protect anonymous sources.
It is only because of the courage of ProPublica’s anonymous sources that the public knows the extent of the horror of the separation of children at the US-Mexico border, and the intertwined interests of billionaire donors and Supreme Court justicesand the preventable nature of abortion-related deaths uncovered in Georgia.
We have a secure way to talk to us and send documents. We honor agreements not to name sources in our stories. We do not rely on any single source for reporting; we independently and carefully confirm and substantiate the evidence.
We help families find answers.
We can help families obtain medical records and then consult with experts about them. We get our findings and go to hospitals, clinics and doctors and ask them for answers. We are working hard to verify all the facts and keep families informed of our progress.
We want to know not only about the last moments of a person’s life, but about it as a whole, to help the public understand the magnitude of the loss and how to avoid another one. We can travel and meet families face-to-face, at the most convenient time, place and pace for them. We recognize that families already feel a loss of control and are working hard not to increase it.
When reporter Kavitha Surana first started talking to Thurman’s family members, their grief was raw and intense, and they didn’t feel ready to deal with their loss. It took a year before they were finally ready to discuss his death.
“Hopefully his death will not be in vain,” his sister Cjuana Williams told ProPublica.
We appreciate your expertise.
Recognizing that each of these cases involves a unique set of highly complex factors, we turn to independent experts to help interpret and convey all the details. We never rely on a single source and put our final stories through a rigorous editing process by journalists with decades of experience covering health systems.
If you have a story to share or volunteer experience, you can contact the entire team, including the editors, at reproductivehealth@propublica.org. You can also leave us a voicemail at 917-512-0242.
If your tip is sensitive, consider sending a secure message to: Sign at 917-512-0242.
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