Fact ChecksRead Next
Analysis
California man charged with murder after DUI crash kills preborn child
Cassy Cooke
·Spotlight Articles
FACT CHECK: ProPublica nearly self-debunks in attempt to link 'abortion bans' to ectopic pregnancy deaths
ProPublica is back, this time with an article that attempts to link a reported increase in ectopic pregnancy deaths to pro-life laws, despite its own admissions that it is difficult to pinpoint the true cause of the increase.
ProPublica reported that deaths associated with ectopic pregnancy have risen since 2020.
Despite numerous acknowledgements about the complicated nature of what is causing the increase, ProPublica continually tried to link it to pro-life state laws. This doesn't help to further women's healthcare.
No state law restricting abortion bars treatment for ectopic pregnancy.
A new analysis from ProPublica reported on a troubling issue: an increase in deaths associated with ectopic pregnancy. ProPublica cited data from the CDC which showed approximately 100 women died in association with ectopic pregnancies from 2014-2020. This number doubled to 200 from 2020-2025.
This is a complex issue, but that didn't stop ProPublica from immediately attempting to tie the issue to abortion laws, even as the outlet repeatedly appeared to debunk its own argument.
Throughout the report, ProPublica's reporters explained that the issue of ectopic pregnancy deaths is complex and multi-faceted, which likely has numerous contributing causes. Yet the outlet also sprinkled repeated statements throughout to ensure that the readers grasped the narrative: it's the fault of pro-life laws. Statements included things like this:
While the uptick in ectopic deaths occurred nationwide, the climb has been much steeper in states that banned abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
And this:
Experts told ProPublica that more research is required to determine the role of the abortion bans in the rise of ectopic-related deaths.
And this:
Caitlin Myers, an economist at Dartmouth College who studies abortion policy, said the deaths should be investigated: “This is a potentially profound consequence of the [abortion] regulation,” she said.
ProPublica specifically pointed to Texas, which reportedly saw a 29% increase in "substantial blood loss" in 2023-2024, compared to 2018-2019.
While the increase began during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it remained high after the pandemic was over, which ProPublica blames on the state's pro-life laws.
ProPublica used the anecdotes of women who were victims of medical malpractice and neglect to drive home their pro-abortion narrative.
Kyleigh Thurman was discharged from the hospital multiple times, with emergency room staff dismissing her concerns as miscarriage, though her OB/GYN had diagnosed her as having an ectopic pregnancy.
“I genuinely thought I was going to die,” she told ProPublica. Her fallopian tube ruptured, and had surgery to save her life — a situation she blamed on the fall of Roe v. Wade and the passage of pro-life laws in Texas.
However, Texas law states: "An act is not an abortion if the act is done with the intent to:
(A) save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child;
(B) remove a dead, unborn child whose death was caused by spontaneous abortion; or
(C) remove an ectopic pregnancy.
Thurman was misdiagnosed and was also denied the proper standard of care. The issue was not that she was denied an abortion. Texas doesn't define ectopic pregnancy treatment as an abortion.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a report following an investigation into Thurman's care, and found that she was not properly screened for ectopic pregnancy, not that she was denied care and sent home out of fear of violating a pro-life law.
Leitaea Lowrimore was a clear victim of medical malpractice in Arkansas. Despite exhibiting obvious symptoms of an ectopic pregnancy, an emergency room doctor tried to discharge her. Once the doctor finally agreed to admit her, he agreed that she likely had an ectopic pregnancy, but refused to treat her, saying it wasn't worth the risk of jail time. Eventually, Lowrimore and her husband drove to Kansas, where she received two shots of methotrexate, but understandably feared she was going to die.
As Live Action News previously reported, in Arkansas, even an induced abortion would be allowed for a "medical emergency," defined as "a condition in which an abortion is necessary to preserve the life of a pregnant woman whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself."
Arkansas law also notes:
It is an affirmative defense to prosecution under this section if a licensed physician provides medical treatment to a pregnant woman which results in the accidental or unintentional injury or death to the unborn child.
Physicians have no excuse for refusing to provide proper care, nor for neglecting to understand the laws that regulate their medical practices.
ProPublica mentioned numerous legitimate issues relating to ectopic pregnancy, but unfortunately buried those issues beneath a pro-abortion narrative.
The outlet's assertion that pro-life laws are to blame for rising ectopic pregnancy deaths is problematic, and ProPublica inadvertently debunked itself by including the systemic problems that are likely contributing to the issue:
As ProPublica pointed out, the initial rise in deaths from ectopic pregnancy began during the COVID-19 pandemic, with its reporters pointing to pro-life laws as an explanation as to why the number of deaths didn't fall to pre-COVID levels once the pandemic was over.
But while the pandemic may be over, the health care system still has not recovered; it is stuck in what The Economist describes as a "doom loop," and it's not limited just to the United States — or to maternal issues like ectopic pregnancy. The outlet noted:
From admission to discharge, hospital care is now harder to access, takes longer and is of worse quality. The resulting toll includes avoidable deaths.
Almost everyone is affected: across 18 rich democracies, satisfaction with health-care quality fell sharply after the pandemic and remains well below the pre-pandemic norm.
Staff continue to be stretched far too thin, hospitals are still too crowded, and wait times too long. This is true of the United States, Europe, and Australia. The Economist continued:
Long waits for treatment have made patients’ conditions more complex.
Some diseases, such as cancers, stayed undiagnosed for longer because people avoided hospitals and clinics during the pandemic. (In America this effect was compounded by a rising avoidance of treatment due to expense.) In addition, populations are older than they were a few years ago.
All this has seen chronic conditions, such as heart disease, cancer and liver disease rise as a share of hospital workloads. Death rates, not adjusted for age, are higher than before the pandemic.
“Patients are staying longer and cost more to treat,” says Dr Richard Leuchter, an acute-medicine specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Patients who stay longer take up precious bed capacity. Bed occupancy is further inflated by poorly performing general-practitioner services and chock-full care homes for the elderly, both of which funnel a growing number of sick and infirm into hospitals.
The increase in deaths is not unique to ectopic pregnancy.
The same issue can be found related to numerous medical conditions, including cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, diabetes and kidney disease, and drug overdoses. While some have begun to see improvement, they still have not returned to pre-COVID rates — which raises the question of whether or not the rise in ectopic pregnancy deaths is as much of an outlier as ProPublica portrays it.
One of the issues, as with Thurman and Lowrimore, is difficulty diagnosing an ectopic pregnancy and treating it before the fallopian tube ruptures and a woman's life is at immediate risk.
ProPublica's solution is seemingly to treat every potential ectopic pregnancy as if it had a firm diagnosis, giving all women treatment before definitive diagnosis is reached:
“Seeing a mass is not the only reason to have high suspicion for an ectopic pregnancy,” said Dr. Rebecca Nerenberg, an emergency medicine doctor in New York and the clinical director at Access Bridge, which educates ER doctors on reproductive healthcare and has released evidence-based guidelines for diagnosing possible ectopic pregnancies.
Experts say that doctors should be able to offer treatment when other symptoms are present, such as plateauing pregnancy hormone levels, bleeding and abdominal pain. Patients can be treated with a procedure or a cancer drug that stops cells from growing.
It is true that doctors should not have to wait for an ectopic pregnancy to appear on an ultrasound before providing treatment. However, one example — abortion pills —exposes a flaw in that logic.
Many symptoms that could indicate an ectopic pregnancy could likewise indicate other complications, including a failed chemical abortion. This is particularly relevant, as women have been encouraged to lie to doctors and staff about the fact that they took abortion pills, and instead say they were experiencing a natural miscarriage. Assuming ectopic pregnancy rather than determining the actual complication could mean women aren't given the treatment they actually need.
A woman with a wanted pregnancy who receives methotrexate without a verified ectopic pregnancy could lose her preborn baby. Methotrexate carries a high risk of miscarriage and birth defects, so giving it to women just based on only a suspicion of ectopic pregnancy seems somewhat reckless.
This is not to say doctors who suspect ectopic pregnancy should do nothing; rather, women should be under close observation unless and until the ectopic pregnancy diagnosis is confirmed or other causes eliminated. But a handful of vague symptoms — like bleeding, abdominal pain, and plateauing pregnancy hormone levels — could apply to any number of complications, and it would be just as careless for doctors to jump to an ectopic pregnancy diagnosis as it would be for them to ignore the possibility altogether.
One of the most valid issues mentioned by ProPublica is that of an apparent lack of interest and research involving women's health care, which remains under-funded and under-researched. (Of course, if outlets like ProPublica continue to hail abortion as the cure-all for women's health and blame abortion restrictions as the bogeyman of all women's ills, this isn't beneficial to women, either.)
As ProPublica pointed out regarding ectopic pregnancy, specifically, it is an ongoing nonpartisan issue that has spanned multiple presidential administrations (emphases added):
One of the biggest challenges to reducing ectopic pregnancy deaths nationwide is the lack of awareness, research and data.
No one, for example, is tracking whether women who experienced ectopic pregnancies also had one or more common risk factors, like a history of ectopic pregnancies, infertility or use of hormonal intrauterine devices, according to ProPublica’s review of maternal health statistics and interviews with experts.
Nor has any published research addressed the connection between recent ectopic pregnancy death rates and untreated infections like gonorrhea and chlamydia, which increased substantially during the first years of the pandemic before declining again. Those infections can cause pelvic inflammatory disease, which causes fallopian tube scarring and raises the long-term risk of developing an ectopic pregnancy.
It is unclear why the CDC and other federal agencies across two administrations have failed to publicly respond to the increase in deaths despite having access to the same information ProPublica analyzed.
Women, and health care issues affecting them, have long been ignored by the medical industry; it wasn't until the 1990s, for example, that women began to be regularly included in clinical trials.
Many drugs and medical devices are still modeled on how they work for men, with less research into how they affect women. This is likely why women experience more adverse events, in some cases at twice the rate men do.
Heart disease is a leading cause of death for women, just as it is for men, and yet it wasn't until 1999 that the American Heart Association acknowledged that women experience different symptoms of heart disease than men do. Research into women's health care gets significantly less funding than into men's health care, even when comparing debilitating conditions like endometriosis to minor issues like male pattern baldness.
And while it's likely inadvertent, ProPublica is contributing to this trend with its continual misguided attempts to blame abortion restrictions for a whole host of problems.
Rather than delve into the actual systemic issues leading to increased ectopic pregnancy deaths, ProPublica has chosen to reduce this, too, to a weapon in its arsenal to further a pro-abortion agenda.
Women deserve better than having a complex, important issue reduced solely to "legal abortion is the solution" because it suits an outlet's political bias more.
Abortion is not the cause of ectopic pregnancy, nor the answer for it. And women suffer when such a narrative is perpetuated by the media.
Women deserve to know the truth about abortion and health care, rather than being misled into believing that all of their problems would be solved with more abortion.
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
Cassy Cooke
·
Fact Checks
Nancy Flanders
·
Pop Culture
Nancy Flanders
·
Fact Checks
Carole Novielli
·
Fact Checks
Kelli Keane
·
Fact Checks
Nancy Flanders
·
Analysis
Cassy Cooke
·
Analysis
Cassy Cooke
·
Analysis
Cassy Cooke
·
International
Cassy Cooke
·
Politics
Cassy Cooke
·FACT CHECK: ProPublica nearly self-debunks in attempt to link 'abortion bans' to ectopic pregnancy deaths
ProPublica is back, this time with an article that attempts to link a reported increase in ectopic pregnancy deaths to pro-life laws, despite its own admissions that it is difficult to pinpoint the true cause of the increase.
ProPublica reported that deaths associated with ectopic pregnancy have risen since 2020.
Despite numerous acknowledgements about the complicated nature of what is causing the increase, ProPublica continually tried to link it to pro-life state laws. This doesn't help to further women's healthcare.
No state law restricting abortion bars treatment for ectopic pregnancy.
A new analysis from ProPublica reported on a troubling issue: an increase in deaths associated with ectopic pregnancy. ProPublica cited data from the CDC which showed approximately 100 women died in association with ectopic pregnancies from 2014-2020. This number doubled to 200 from 2020-2025.
This is a complex issue, but that didn't stop ProPublica from immediately attempting to tie the issue to abortion laws, even as the outlet repeatedly appeared to debunk its own argument.
Throughout the report, ProPublica's reporters explained that the issue of ectopic pregnancy deaths is complex and multi-faceted, which likely has numerous contributing causes. Yet the outlet also sprinkled repeated statements throughout to ensure that the readers grasped the narrative: it's the fault of pro-life laws. Statements included things like this:
While the uptick in ectopic deaths occurred nationwide, the climb has been much steeper in states that banned abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
And this:
Experts told ProPublica that more research is required to determine the role of the abortion bans in the rise of ectopic-related deaths.
And this:
Caitlin Myers, an economist at Dartmouth College who studies abortion policy, said the deaths should be investigated: “This is a potentially profound consequence of the [abortion] regulation,” she said.
ProPublica specifically pointed to Texas, which reportedly saw a 29% increase in "substantial blood loss" in 2023-2024, compared to 2018-2019.
While the increase began during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it remained high after the pandemic was over, which ProPublica blames on the state's pro-life laws.
ProPublica used the anecdotes of women who were victims of medical malpractice and neglect to drive home their pro-abortion narrative.
Kyleigh Thurman was discharged from the hospital multiple times, with emergency room staff dismissing her concerns as miscarriage, though her OB/GYN had diagnosed her as having an ectopic pregnancy.
“I genuinely thought I was going to die,” she told ProPublica. Her fallopian tube ruptured, and had surgery to save her life — a situation she blamed on the fall of Roe v. Wade and the passage of pro-life laws in Texas.
However, Texas law states: "An act is not an abortion if the act is done with the intent to:
(A) save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child;
(B) remove a dead, unborn child whose death was caused by spontaneous abortion; or
(C) remove an ectopic pregnancy.
Thurman was misdiagnosed and was also denied the proper standard of care. The issue was not that she was denied an abortion. Texas doesn't define ectopic pregnancy treatment as an abortion.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a report following an investigation into Thurman's care, and found that she was not properly screened for ectopic pregnancy, not that she was denied care and sent home out of fear of violating a pro-life law.
Leitaea Lowrimore was a clear victim of medical malpractice in Arkansas. Despite exhibiting obvious symptoms of an ectopic pregnancy, an emergency room doctor tried to discharge her. Once the doctor finally agreed to admit her, he agreed that she likely had an ectopic pregnancy, but refused to treat her, saying it wasn't worth the risk of jail time. Eventually, Lowrimore and her husband drove to Kansas, where she received two shots of methotrexate, but understandably feared she was going to die.
As Live Action News previously reported, in Arkansas, even an induced abortion would be allowed for a "medical emergency," defined as "a condition in which an abortion is necessary to preserve the life of a pregnant woman whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself."
Arkansas law also notes:
It is an affirmative defense to prosecution under this section if a licensed physician provides medical treatment to a pregnant woman which results in the accidental or unintentional injury or death to the unborn child.
Physicians have no excuse for refusing to provide proper care, nor for neglecting to understand the laws that regulate their medical practices.
ProPublica mentioned numerous legitimate issues relating to ectopic pregnancy, but unfortunately buried those issues beneath a pro-abortion narrative.
The outlet's assertion that pro-life laws are to blame for rising ectopic pregnancy deaths is problematic, and ProPublica inadvertently debunked itself by including the systemic problems that are likely contributing to the issue:
As ProPublica pointed out, the initial rise in deaths from ectopic pregnancy began during the COVID-19 pandemic, with its reporters pointing to pro-life laws as an explanation as to why the number of deaths didn't fall to pre-COVID levels once the pandemic was over.
But while the pandemic may be over, the health care system still has not recovered; it is stuck in what The Economist describes as a "doom loop," and it's not limited just to the United States — or to maternal issues like ectopic pregnancy. The outlet noted:
From admission to discharge, hospital care is now harder to access, takes longer and is of worse quality. The resulting toll includes avoidable deaths.
Almost everyone is affected: across 18 rich democracies, satisfaction with health-care quality fell sharply after the pandemic and remains well below the pre-pandemic norm.
Staff continue to be stretched far too thin, hospitals are still too crowded, and wait times too long. This is true of the United States, Europe, and Australia. The Economist continued:
Long waits for treatment have made patients’ conditions more complex.
Some diseases, such as cancers, stayed undiagnosed for longer because people avoided hospitals and clinics during the pandemic. (In America this effect was compounded by a rising avoidance of treatment due to expense.) In addition, populations are older than they were a few years ago.
All this has seen chronic conditions, such as heart disease, cancer and liver disease rise as a share of hospital workloads. Death rates, not adjusted for age, are higher than before the pandemic.
“Patients are staying longer and cost more to treat,” says Dr Richard Leuchter, an acute-medicine specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Patients who stay longer take up precious bed capacity. Bed occupancy is further inflated by poorly performing general-practitioner services and chock-full care homes for the elderly, both of which funnel a growing number of sick and infirm into hospitals.
The increase in deaths is not unique to ectopic pregnancy.
The same issue can be found related to numerous medical conditions, including cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, diabetes and kidney disease, and drug overdoses. While some have begun to see improvement, they still have not returned to pre-COVID rates — which raises the question of whether or not the rise in ectopic pregnancy deaths is as much of an outlier as ProPublica portrays it.
One of the issues, as with Thurman and Lowrimore, is difficulty diagnosing an ectopic pregnancy and treating it before the fallopian tube ruptures and a woman's life is at immediate risk.
ProPublica's solution is seemingly to treat every potential ectopic pregnancy as if it had a firm diagnosis, giving all women treatment before definitive diagnosis is reached:
“Seeing a mass is not the only reason to have high suspicion for an ectopic pregnancy,” said Dr. Rebecca Nerenberg, an emergency medicine doctor in New York and the clinical director at Access Bridge, which educates ER doctors on reproductive healthcare and has released evidence-based guidelines for diagnosing possible ectopic pregnancies.
Experts say that doctors should be able to offer treatment when other symptoms are present, such as plateauing pregnancy hormone levels, bleeding and abdominal pain. Patients can be treated with a procedure or a cancer drug that stops cells from growing.
It is true that doctors should not have to wait for an ectopic pregnancy to appear on an ultrasound before providing treatment. However, one example — abortion pills —exposes a flaw in that logic.
Many symptoms that could indicate an ectopic pregnancy could likewise indicate other complications, including a failed chemical abortion. This is particularly relevant, as women have been encouraged to lie to doctors and staff about the fact that they took abortion pills, and instead say they were experiencing a natural miscarriage. Assuming ectopic pregnancy rather than determining the actual complication could mean women aren't given the treatment they actually need.
A woman with a wanted pregnancy who receives methotrexate without a verified ectopic pregnancy could lose her preborn baby. Methotrexate carries a high risk of miscarriage and birth defects, so giving it to women just based on only a suspicion of ectopic pregnancy seems somewhat reckless.
This is not to say doctors who suspect ectopic pregnancy should do nothing; rather, women should be under close observation unless and until the ectopic pregnancy diagnosis is confirmed or other causes eliminated. But a handful of vague symptoms — like bleeding, abdominal pain, and plateauing pregnancy hormone levels — could apply to any number of complications, and it would be just as careless for doctors to jump to an ectopic pregnancy diagnosis as it would be for them to ignore the possibility altogether.
One of the most valid issues mentioned by ProPublica is that of an apparent lack of interest and research involving women's health care, which remains under-funded and under-researched. (Of course, if outlets like ProPublica continue to hail abortion as the cure-all for women's health and blame abortion restrictions as the bogeyman of all women's ills, this isn't beneficial to women, either.)
As ProPublica pointed out regarding ectopic pregnancy, specifically, it is an ongoing nonpartisan issue that has spanned multiple presidential administrations (emphases added):
One of the biggest challenges to reducing ectopic pregnancy deaths nationwide is the lack of awareness, research and data.
No one, for example, is tracking whether women who experienced ectopic pregnancies also had one or more common risk factors, like a history of ectopic pregnancies, infertility or use of hormonal intrauterine devices, according to ProPublica’s review of maternal health statistics and interviews with experts.
Nor has any published research addressed the connection between recent ectopic pregnancy death rates and untreated infections like gonorrhea and chlamydia, which increased substantially during the first years of the pandemic before declining again. Those infections can cause pelvic inflammatory disease, which causes fallopian tube scarring and raises the long-term risk of developing an ectopic pregnancy.
It is unclear why the CDC and other federal agencies across two administrations have failed to publicly respond to the increase in deaths despite having access to the same information ProPublica analyzed.
Women, and health care issues affecting them, have long been ignored by the medical industry; it wasn't until the 1990s, for example, that women began to be regularly included in clinical trials.
Many drugs and medical devices are still modeled on how they work for men, with less research into how they affect women. This is likely why women experience more adverse events, in some cases at twice the rate men do.
Heart disease is a leading cause of death for women, just as it is for men, and yet it wasn't until 1999 that the American Heart Association acknowledged that women experience different symptoms of heart disease than men do. Research into women's health care gets significantly less funding than into men's health care, even when comparing debilitating conditions like endometriosis to minor issues like male pattern baldness.
And while it's likely inadvertent, ProPublica is contributing to this trend with its continual misguided attempts to blame abortion restrictions for a whole host of problems.
Rather than delve into the actual systemic issues leading to increased ectopic pregnancy deaths, ProPublica has chosen to reduce this, too, to a weapon in its arsenal to further a pro-abortion agenda.
Women deserve better than having a complex, important issue reduced solely to "legal abortion is the solution" because it suits an outlet's political bias more.
Abortion is not the cause of ectopic pregnancy, nor the answer for it. And women suffer when such a narrative is perpetuated by the media.
Women deserve to know the truth about abortion and health care, rather than being misled into believing that all of their problems would be solved with more abortion.
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
Cassy Cooke
·Fact Checks
Nancy Flanders
·Pop Culture
Nancy Flanders
·Fact Checks
Carole Novielli
·Fact Checks
Kelli Keane
·Fact Checks
Nancy Flanders
·Analysis
Cassy Cooke
·Analysis
Cassy Cooke
·Analysis
Cassy Cooke
·International
Cassy Cooke
·Politics
Cassy Cooke
·