"This is so cruel and pointless," said one advocate. "Texas and other 'pro-life' states force women to carry doomed pregnancies for months... only to watch their babies die."

Overall, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the state’s abortion law, which bans the procedure after just six weeks of pregnancy with no exception for fetal abnormalities, led to a 13% rise in Texas’ infant mortality rate from 2021-2022.

“Behind these numbers are people,” Dr. Erika Werner, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Tufts Medical Center, who was not involved in the research, told NBC News. “For each of these pregnancies, that’s a pregnant person who had to stay pregnant for an additional 20 weeks, carrying a pregnancy that they knew likely wouldn’t result in a live newborn baby.”