Pregnancy complications are the fifth most common reason why women age 15 to 64 seek care at emergency departments in the United States, according to data published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. In 2021, pregnancy complications led to about two million emergency department visits, the CDC estimates.
Warning signs of an emergency during pregnancy can include bleeding, chest pain and dizziness. There is not sufficient data to understand how many of these emergencies require an induced termination, or abortion.
However, experts say that abortion bans may increase the number of pregnancy-related emergencies and that restricting the option to have an abortion in emergencies can threaten the health and livelihood of the pregnant person.
“Abortion care is part of standard and proven medical practice to reduce risk and in some cases, save lives. Tying the hands of emergency medicine healthcare workers would pose a major threat to pregnant people and public health,” Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, said in an email.
“Abortion care is extremely safe, safer than continuing a pregnancy to term,” she said.
More context: One study from 2015 found that only 0.23% of abortions — including medication and procedural cases — resulted in a major complication that required hospital admission, surgery or blood transfusion. Meanwhile, a 2012 study found that childbirth caused severe complications five times more often, or 1.3% of the time.
Maternal mortality in the US has increased sharply in recent years, rising from about 20 deaths for every 100,000 live births in 2020 to nearly 33 deaths for every 100,000 live births, according to a CDC report published last year. The latest abortion surveillance data from the CDC suggests that there was less than one death for every 100,000 legal abortions in the US.
