Deaths involving ectopic pregnancies have nearly doubled in the United States, according to federal mortality records, while federal agencies have offered little public response to the reported increase. ProPublica reported that almost 200 women died after an ectopic pregnancy from 2020 to 2025, compared with about 100 in the previous six years.

Maternal health specialists say the condition should not kill anyone who receives prompt care.

Deaths Climb With Little Official Notice

ProPublica analysed CDC WONDER multiple-cause-of-death files, grouping results into three-year blocks because yearly totals often fall below the federal suppression threshold of ten.

The national rate reached 9.8 deaths per million live births in 2023-2025. Other pregnancy-related death rates rose during the pandemic then receded; ectopic deaths kept climbing.

No federal health agency appears to have issued a statement, alert or dedicated review of the increase despite having the same data.

An HHS spokesperson said the department continues to track maternal mortality trends, investigate causes and fund research, adding that the work is being accelerated to support healthy mothers and babies.

According to ProPublica, the CDC's Division of Reproductive Health lost most of its roughly 100 employees, while the team running the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System was placed on paid administrative leave.

Steeper Rise Recorded Where Abortion Bans Apply

The increase was markedly steeper in states that enacted and enforced bans beginning at six weeks of pregnancy or earlier after the 2022 Dobbs ruling. Those states recorded 13.1 deaths per million live births in the latest interval, against 7.1 in states that did not enact such a ban.

Texas hospital records showed 310 more patients suffered substantial blood loss after an ectopic pregnancy in 2023 and 2024 than in 2018 and 2019, a 29 per cent rise that persisted after hospitals stabilised. The analysis is observational and cannot isolate a single cause.

Experts reviewing the work noted that diagnosis can take days, during which rupture risk grows, and that some clinicians have hesitated even though statutes generally except ectopic cases.

Women from Texas and Oklahoma have filed lawsuits alleging delays in ectopic-pregnancy care, including a Texas case in which a patient's fallopian tube subsequently ruptured.

Experts Call Preventable Ectopic Pregnancy Deaths a Never Event

Ectopic pregnancy occurs in up to 2 per cent of pregnancies when a fertilised egg implants outside the uterus, most often in a fallopian tube.

An ectopic pregnancy is almost never viable and may be treated with methotrexate or surgery, depending on the circumstances. Dr Alice Abernathy, an obstetrician-gynaecologist in Philadelphia, said 'a death related to ectopic pregnancy should really be a never event'.

Dr Courtney Schreiber, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, said the findings raise concern that young women are dying from a preventable cause at a rising rate, adding that this is not what we should be seeing in the United States.

The same federal files that produced the counts remain publicly accessible this month. Clinicians still describe the deaths as avoidable when care is not postponed, and the absence of a formal federal review leaves rising preventable ectopic pregnancy deaths largely unexamined by the agencies that already hold the raw numbers on file today.

Read more