ProPublica’s skillfully reported series “Life of the Mother,” which reveals how state abortion bans in the U.S. have led to preventable deaths, is the winner of the 2024 Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism. The series has also been selected for the Nieman Foundation’s 2024 Taylor Award for Fairness in Journalism.
ProPublica reporters Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser and Cassandra Jaramillo exposed the unexamined, irreversible consequences of state abortion bans by telling the stories of five pregnant women who died after they did not receive lifesaving care in states that ban abortion.
The series showed the human toll of state abortion bans, many enacted after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Three of the women profiled, all living in Texas and one still a teenager, had miscarriages but were not able to receive treatment they needed to survive. Two others in Georgia suffered fatal complications after they couldn’t access legal abortions in their state: One was afraid to seek care and the other died of sepsis after doctors delayed performing an urgently needed procedure for 20 hours.
Bingham Prize judge Andrew Ryan noted: “In each case, doctors, fearing legal repercussions, hesitated to provide essential maternal care, with deadly results. Investigating these tragedies was no easy task. States with abortion bans do not track these outcomes, forcing reporters to sift through death records, fight for access to autopsies and gain the trust of grieving families.
“These five deaths—and the systemic efforts to keep them hidden—would have been a staggering revelation on their own. But the series didn’t stop there. ProPublica reporter Surana and photojournalist Stacy Kranitz spent a year documenting the life of Mayron Hollis, a woman forced to continue a life-threatening pregnancy in a state [Tennessee] that banned abortion yet offered little support once the baby was born. Hollis, who had already had several children taken away by the state, unraveled before readers’ eyes in raw, unflinching detail. Her story was so vivid, so painfully real, it was almost unbearable to read.”
Bingham Prize judge Sarah Varney added: “This investigative effort by ProPublica demonstrated the deadly consequences of abortion bans enacted by more than a dozen states and allowed readers to see how these bans hamstring urgent and emergent medical care needed by women experiencing miscarriage or other pregnancy-related complications. These stories offered vital facts as voters weighed in on abortion rights measures in last November’s election. And these stories were a turning point for Americans’ understanding of the seismic shift in women’s lives in the post-Dobbs era.”
The impact of reporting
ProPublica’s series shed light on a deadly policy outcome that had gone unreported. The project has had widespread impact, spurring important changes and reforms at the federal level and in states across the country.
- In September 2024, a resolution introduced by dozens of U.S. senators called on hospitals to provide emergency abortion care when patients needed it. A companion resolution was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives one week later. ProPublica’s reporting was mentioned in the announcement.
- Citing ProPublica’s reporting on one of the deaths in Georgia, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, chair of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, opened an investigation that showed how hospitals have been “conspicuously and deliberately silent” in the face of abortion bans, with doctors given little guidance on how to treat emergency patients with pregnancy complications. The committee released hundreds of pages of internal hospital policies and protocols, allowing doctors to compare how their institutions handle bans and to advocate for better practices.
- ProPublica’s reporting provided voters with new information as they evaluated November ballot initiatives to expand abortion access, many of which passed.
- In January 2025, ProPublica reported that lawmakers in at least seven states were seeking expanded abortion access, with some of the bills filed in direct response to ProPublica’s reporting. In Texas, a bill was introduced to direct the state’s maternal mortality review committee to examine cases in which women died after miscarriages or because they could not access procedures to end pregnancies; the state currently restricts the committee from looking at cases in any way associated with abortion procedures.
- Four members of the House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Accountability demanded a briefing from Texas’ health department on why its maternal mortality review committee has omitted examination of two years of deaths, including cases ProPublica reported.
- In March 2025, Republican lawmakers in Texas proposed amending the abortion ban to make it clear that doctors can terminate pregnancies for serious medical risks without having to wait until a patient’s condition becomes life-threatening. The bill was written by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, the author of the original ban who said just four months earlier that exceptions for medical emergencies were “plenty clear.” Texas’ governor and lieutenant governor have signaled support for the bill. The new legislation came after 111 Texas doctors, citing ProPublica’s reporting, signed a public letter urging that the ban be changed because it restricted their ability to do their work.
Bingham Prize judge Denise Hruby said: “Ultimately, this groundbreaking work contributed to shifting the conversation about abortion by framing it as a medical procedure that can save lives, empowering voters to pass ballot initiatives to expand access to abortion.”
The journalists who judged the Bingham Prize submissions this year are New York Times investigative reporter Hannah Dreier, winner of the 2023 Bingham Prize for her “Alone and Exploited,” series, and six 2024 Nieman Fellows: Andrew Ryan, an investigative reporter for The Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team; Denise Hruby, a climate reporter at the Miami Herald; independent journalist Ilya Marritz; Denise Cetta Schrier, producer and writer for CBS News’ “60 Minutes”; James Barragán, anchor of “Capital Tonight” on Spectrum News 1 in Texas; and Sarah Varney, founder and executive producer of Fountain Productions and a special healthcare correspondent for “PBS News Hour” and NPR. Following Nieman’s conflict-of-interest guidelines, Dreier, a former ProPublica reporter, recused herself from judging “Life of the Mother.”
The Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism, which carries an award of $20,000, honors investigative reporting of stories of national significance where the public interest is being ill-served. It is presented annually by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Worth Bingham, who died at the age of 34, achieved prominence as an investigative journalist and was vice president and assistant to the publisher for the Louisville Courier-Journal. He was a 1954 Harvard University graduate. His family and friends created the annual prize in his memory in 1967.
The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard educates leaders in journalism, promotes innovation and elevates the standards of the profession. More than 1,700 journalists from 100 countries have been awarded Nieman Fellowships since 1938. The foundation also publishes Nieman Reports, a website and print magazine covering thought leadership in journalism; Nieman Journalism Lab, a website reporting on the future of news, innovation and best practices in the digital media age; and Nieman Storyboard, a website showcasing exceptional narrative journalism and nonfiction storytelling.
