A 2026 analysis suggests that the risk of death related to pregnancy is close to 44 times higher than the death risk linked to abortion.
This number is substantially higher than generally reported statistic that proposes pregnancy is 14 times more likely to result in death than an abortion is.
The Risk of Death From Pregnancy
In recent decades, maternal care in the United States has been declining. Reported by The Commonwealth Fund, maternal deaths consistently increased since the 2000 to 2024. Most of these deaths are likely preventable, the report said.
The 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — which overturned Roe v. Wade — made it more feasible for states to heavily restrict or ban abortion.
The impacts of that judicial decision are anticipated to prevent improvements in the maternal mortality rate in the near future. Certain populations’ intensely feel this disparity.
Lead study author Maria Steenland, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health, reported,
“It was already fairly alarming that you face a 14-times greater risk of death from continuing a pregnancy [compared to getting an abortion]. But the statistics we report here suggest that this risk is really much, much higher. What we’re showing in the paper is quite simple: Taking away the option to end a pregnancy exposes people to a much greater risk of death.”
Professor Steenland said,
“You don’t have to know a lot about maternal health in the U.S. to think, ‘Perhaps that statistic has changed since then.’”
The professor added,
“I think people should know what they’re facing, and policymakers should be required to try to make it possible for everyone to access the highest-quality maternity care, to have the best outcomes that they possibly could have.”
Steenland noted that in the near future, it might be difficult to track pregnancy-related deaths, due to the large staffing cuts to the CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health staff in 2025.
In addition, professor Steenland remarks,
“It’s very unlikely that CDC will continue to release abortion related mortality statistic. That limitation, along with other reductions and publicly available information that can be used to measure these outcomes, will limit for sure what we can know about how the ratio has changed or will have changed.”
Variables to Consider
The study looked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System for records of deaths that had happened within a year of birth; the data covered about 32,350,000 live births in the United States, between 1998 and 2005.
This data was compared with records of abortions-related deaths collected by the CDC across those same years, totaling 65. That was out of about 10 million total abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute — a nonprofit research organization that monitors abortion surveillance data in the U.S. and globally.
Researcher thought this data might be critically outdated.
The statistics are based on 20-year old data. When tracing the original estimate of risk back to its source, Steenland and her colleagues realized the statistic was based on a single 2012 study using data that is now almost 20 years old.
To establish an updated risk ratio, the study authors painstakingly went through national databases to pool statistics collected between 2018 and 2021. The databases included the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System, which provided the total number of births and pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S., out to a year postpartum.
The CDC’s Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System documented the number of abortion-related deaths per year, while the total number of abortions per year was obtained from the Guttmacher Institute.
Study Results
The study found an annual average of 32.3 maternal deaths per 100,000 births in the U.S. between 2018 and 2021. That included at least 3,662 pregnancy-related deaths over the four years, out of about 15 million births. That’s at least twice the pregnancy-related death rate reported in the 2012 study…which ranged from 8.8 to 14.5 per 100,000 live births.
The study authors suggested the increased rate might come down to improved tracking of pregnancy-related deaths — in particular, a 2003 revision to U.S. death certificates — which was an added “pregnancy” checkbox — fully applied in 2018.
In addition, the risk of abortion-related death reported in the new study remained very low.
In Contrast
However, the risk of death from pregnancy varies by socioeconomic status and the age of an expecting mother. Access to health care is also noted. These factors can make a big difference in how well a pregnancy goes. Additionally, whether it leads to complications that can result in death.
The risk ratio itself is also “highly dependent” on the dataset being used to capture abortion rates across the U.S.
Stephen Burgess, a statistician at the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the study, offers his thoughts.
Notably, the Guttmacher Institute didn’t report the number of abortions in the U.S. in 2021. The study authors duplicated the stats from 2020 for the number of abortions in the U.S. in 2021. They assumed they were about the same.
Nonetheless, Burgess welcomed the new research. He added that this recent study provides a more accurate evaluation of the death risk tied to pregnancy — including postpartum care. However, he questioned whether the figure would be ‘useful in helping either mothers or policymakers to make good decisions.”
This study titles, “Pregnancy- and Abortion-Related Mortality in the US, 2018-2021,” was published Jan. 21 in the journal JAMA Network Open
