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When my colleagues and I started digging around in CDC data on pregnancy-related deaths, we noticed something surprising: the rate of ectopic pregnancy deaths had more than doubled in recent years. Nearly 200 women died between 2020 and 2025. So we set out to learn why 🧵

We started reaching out to experts who study maternal health. Many were surprised by these numbers, and had the same questions we had — has the rate of ectopic pregnancy increased? Has access to care changed?

“A death related to ectopic pregnancy should really be a never event,” Dr. Alice Abernathy told us. But that relies on access to care, the diagnosis of a rare condition early in pregnancy, at a time when someone may not even know she is pregnant, and speedy treatment.

Experts told us that chaos and access issues at hospitals during Covid likely contributed to at least some of the deaths; ectopic pregnancy care often happens in the emergency department. But the surge persisted even after the pandemic’s worst effects waned.

Lawsuits describing delays in care in states that have banned abortion set us down another potential path. When we compared ectopic pregnancy death rates between states that implemented strict abortion bans after Dobbs and those that did not ban abortion, we saw a growing divide.