Ectopic pregnancy deaths have nearly doubled. ProPublica found the gap is widest where abortion is banned.
An ectopic pregnancy is one that implants outside the womb. It cannot survive there, and untreated it can kill within days.
That has always been true. What ProPublica reports is that Americans are now dying of it at close to twice the rate they were a decade ago.
The finding is ProPublica's own, drawn from CDC mortality records. About one hundred deaths between 2014 and 2019. Nearly two hundred between 2020 and 2025.
The gap between states is where the reporting goes next. From 2023 to 2025, states with abortion bans recorded 13.1 ectopic pregnancy deaths per million live births. States without them recorded 7.1.
It is the same condition on either side of a state line.
The condition itself did not change. What doctors and lawyers told ProPublica is that getting a legally defensible diagnosis under a ban can take days, and the risk of rupture climbs while that is happening.
Kyleigh Thurman's case is in the reporting because federal regulators looked at it. The Texas Tribune reports that Ascension Seton Williamson Hospital in Round Rock sent her home twice in February 2023 with an ectopic pregnancy diagnosis. Her fallopian tube ruptured. In May 2025 the Department of Health and Human Services notified her that the hospital had violated EMTALA, the federal law requiring emergency treatment.
There is a study that reads the other way, and it belongs on the page. Bell and Gemmill, in the American Journal of Public Health, examined national vital statistics from 2016 to 2023 across fourteen states with bans. They found a 9.2 percent rise in the broader category of pregnancy-associated deaths, and no statistically measurable rise in the narrower maternal mortality category.
The authors caution against reading that null result as proof of no harm. The two are also not measuring the same thing. ProPublica counted deaths from one specific condition. The study counted every death associated with a pregnancy.
What changed was not the pregnancy.
By the numbers
- about 100 vs nearly 200 — ectopic pregnancy deaths, 2014-2019 against 2020-2025, from ProPublica's analysis of CDC mortality data[1]
- 13.1 per million — ectopic pregnancy deaths per million live births in states with abortion bans, 2023-2025[2]
- 7.1 per million — the same rate in states without bans[3]
- EMTALA violation — HHS notified Kyleigh Thurman in May 2025 that Ascension Seton Williamson Hospital violated the federal emergency care law in her case[4]
- 9.2 percent — rise in pregnancy-associated deaths in fourteen ban states, 2016-2023, with no statistically measurable rise in the narrower maternal mortality category[5]
The reporting
This story is built on reporting by ProPublica. Read the original →
Sources
- ProPublica, Ectopic pregnancy deaths have nearly doubled
- Texas Tribune, Federal regulators find Texas hospital violated the law in an ectopic pregnancy case
- American Journal of Public Health, Bell and Gemmill on maternal mortality in states with abortion bans
- Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, study summary
Image credits
- Hero: source (CC BY-SA) — Daderot/Wikimedia Commons
- Kyleigh Thurman: source (Editorial, operator-cleared) — AP Photo/Eric Gay
- Ultrasound: source (Public domain) — Linda Bartlett/National Cancer Institute
