The New York Times Magazine’s photo essay What a High-Risk Pregnancy Looks Like After Dobbs, released in print this weekend, explains in grave detail the new reality thousands of women must endure following the Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion in the US. TYTW Founding Executive Director and Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist, Stephanie Sinclair, spent two weeks photographing the effects of this ruling at the Cleveland Clinic’s maternal-fetal medicine department, and her powerful photos are shared across 15 pages. 

The Dobbs decision has already had catastrophic consequences, most notably on child and adolescent girls now forced to carry their pregnancies to term. Being forced to carry and deliver a child while still a child oneself causes irreversible physical and psychological trauma. Complications, including maternal and infant morbidity and mortality, are much higher in young mothers. Babies born to mothers under 20 years of age face higher risks of low birth weight, preterm delivery and severe neonatal conditions. Additionally, young girls who keep their pregnancies are more likely to drop out of school and struggle to find adequate employment to provide for their children, who are then, in turn, more likely to have a young pregnancy themselves, helping to reinforce intergenerational cycles of poverty.

Thank you for standing by the girls and women of the world during this devastating time of mass rollbacks of their rights on a global scale.