How We Report on Maternal Health — and How to Get in Touch With Our Team

by Alexandra Zayas

More than a dozen ProPublica journalists are working across the country to cover reproductive health in the wake of abortion bans. We hope to hear from medical providers, families and policymakers. We asked Deputy Managing Editor Alexandra Zayas to explain our reporting process and the ethics that guide it.

It’s clear by now that state abortion bans are having a seismic impact on health care. They are, as intended, preventing doctors from terminating pregnancies. But they are also introducing a dangerous new dynamic for anyone who happens to conceive.

If you have a story to share or expertise to volunteer, you can get in touch with the whole team, including editors, by:

• Email
• Voicemail
• Signal

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Doctors have told us they’ve seen their colleagues hesitate to treat deadly conditions like preeclampsia and cancer, worried their attempts to protect their pregnant patients could be interpreted as a crime against the fetus, punishable by prison time.

Defenders of abortion bans insist that those doctors are being misled or confused, and that so-called “life-of-the-mother” exceptions are clear. But even a Republican lawmaker who voted for his state’s ban, a doctor himself, told ProPublica he thinks the language is too vague.

Indeed, the death of Amber Thurman raises critical questions about the role abortion bans are playing in the decisions of doctors in emergency situations. Suffering from a grave infection, the 28-year-old medical assistant and single mother needed a procedure that had been criminalized in Georgia, with few exceptions. As her condition deteriorated in a suburban Atlanta hospital, doctors discussed performing it, but they did not do so until 20 hours after she had arrived; by then, it was too late. A state committee of maternal health experts, including 10 doctors, deemed her death preventable and blamed a delay in care.

The more cases like these we examine, the more we can do to expose the cracks through which women are falling.

ProPublica has a long, successful track record of exploring the causes of maternal harm. Seven years ago, we dedicated 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 dug past academic research and hospital data to explore individual, preventable deaths. What specific, fixable flaws in the system had cost us Lauren Bloomstein, and Shalon Irving, and Dacheca Fleurimond? What had left their babies motherless?

Each loss was a tragedy. But when the people closest to those mothers shared what they knew, they also unearthed lessons for how to save the next life, illuminating the causes and consequences of maternal mortality in a way nothing else had.ProPublica’s reporting on the “Lost Mothers” had a tremendous impact, including a landmark new law funding the study of maternal deaths and how to prevent them.

Our reporting so far suggests state abortion bans are having unintended, lethal consequences. If there are more cases out there, only the people closest to the families know the most critical details. This is why we’ve again devoted a significant portion of our newsroom to examining preventable maternal deaths — and it’s why we need your help to unearth them, so that those with the power to change systems can learn from them.

If you happen to be aware of a case in which you suspect abortion-related laws played a role, we understand why you may be hesitant to tell us about it. This is why we want to tell you more about our reporting process and the ethics that guide it.

We are nonpartisan.

We are a nonprofit, independent newsroom and have no partisan agenda in exposing these deaths. While we are bringing necessary scrutiny to the Republican state governments that passed these bans, we are also questioning what more the Biden administration can do to assess and mitigate their consequences.

Ahead of a heated election in which abortion is on the ballot in 10 states — and on the lips of presidential candidates — we want voters to know everything they can about the impact state bans are having on the safety of anyone who can conceive.

We rely on and protect anonymous sources.

Only because of the courage of ProPublica’s anonymous sources does the public know the extent of the horror of child separation at the U.S.-Mexico border, and the intertwined interests of billionaire donors and Supreme Court justices, and the preventable nature of the abortion-related deaths we exposed in Georgia.

We have secure ways to speak to us and send us documents. We honor agreements to not name sources in our stories. We do not rely on any single source for reporting; we independently and carefully confirm and corroborate evidence.

We help families find answers.

We can help families get medical records and then consult with experts about them. We take our findings and go to hospitals, clinics and doctors and press them for answers. We work hard to check every fact and to keep families updated on our progress.

We want to know not just about the last moments of a person’s life, but the entirety of it, to help the public understand the magnitude of the loss and how to avoid another. We can travel and meet with families face-to-face, at the time, place and pace that feels most comfortable to them. We recognize the loss of control families already feel and work hard to not add to that.

When reporter Kavitha Surana first began talking with Thurman’s family members, their grief was raw and intense, and they did not feel ready to grapple with their loss. It took a year before they were finally ready to discuss her death.

“Hopefully her death won’t be in vain,” her sister Cjuana Williams told ProPublica.

We value expertise.

Recognizing that every one of these cases involves a unique set of very complex factors, we seek out independent experts to help us interpret and convey all of the details. We never rely on one source, and we subject our final stories to a rigorous editing process by journalists with decades of experience reporting on health care systems.

If you have a story to share or expertise to volunteer, you can get in touch with the whole team, including editors, at reproductivehealth@propublica.org. You can also leave us a voicemail at 917-512-0242.

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This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Alexandra Zayas.