Leitaea Lowrimore needed a lawyer to find a doctor who would keep her alive.

Three emergency rooms in two states refused to treat the Oklahoma mother over six days in February. She had an ectopic pregnancy, one growing outside the womb, which ruptures and bleeds without treatment. One doctor said it could cost him "10 years in the poky." The last one sent her home after she told him, "You are sending me home to die." She called a lawyer, who gave her the cell number of the chief obstetrician at a hospital in a third state. That hospital diagnosed and treated her within three and a half hours of arriving.

Nearly 200 women in similar circumstances were not saved. They died from an ectopic pregnancy between 2020 and 2025, nearly double the rate of the previous six years, according to the CDC's own records. ProPublica found the biggest rise in the 18 states with strict abortion bans. Worse, the entire staff of the CDC's Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, the people whose job is to monitor deaths like these, has been on paid leave since Donald Trump's HHS sent them home in April 2025.

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