Texas voters will not see the state's next report on deaths of pregnant women before the Nov. 3 election. The Department of State Health Services says it aims to release the report by Dec. 1, the deadline set in state law, The Washington Sun reported Monday.
The report, produced every two years with the state's Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee, will be the first to include data from after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and Texas' near-total abortion ban took effect.
According to the Sun, the report has usually come out no later than early September, and committee members said at a public meeting in March that they were working toward that timeline.
Why the date moved
State officials point to House Bill 4666, a 2025 law that pushed the due date for some health agency reports to Dec. 1 as part of a broader streamlining of the agency's publications.
"There is no delay. Under HB 4666, which the Texas Legislature passed in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion, the deadline for DSHS to submit the report is Dec. 1," Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott's press secretary, told the Sun.
A DSHS spokesperson said the report is going through the agency's internal review. The acting commissioner asked the committee to strengthen it by describing more of its work on preventability, better defining where its recommendations come from and drawing clearer lines between the data, findings and recommendations, the agency said.
