Welcome to this episode of Under the Radar, our weekly look at what the Trump regime is getting away with while Americans are too busy paying attention to the new outrages being committed. This week, we’re looking at what happens when women start dying in the wake of one of the most consequential rollbacks of women’s control over their own bodies in modern American history.
Doctors say an ectopic pregnancy should almost never end in death. Ectopic pregnancies are treatable and with appropriate and timely medical care, overwhelmingly survivable. But in Donald Trump’s America, women are dying. Why? Well, let’s start first with what an ectopic pregnancy actually is.
An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, most commonly in the fallopian tube. Ectopic pregnancies can never result in a viable birth. They will never become viable fetuses. Without prompt treatment, ectopic pregnancies can rupture, causing potentially catastrophic internal bleeding. There is literally no reason that an ectopic pregnancy should not be treated, regardless of your views on abortion.
ProPublica analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and found that almost 200 women from 2020 through 2025 died after having ectopic pregnancies. In the previous six years, roughly a hundred women died. The increase occurred nationwide and began during the COVID pandemic. When ProPublica separated states with strict abortion bans from states without them, another pattern emerged. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June of 2022, states have been free to impose abortion bans that previously would have been unconstitutional. In January 2026, the White House celebrated Donald’s three appointments to the court and said the Supreme Court delivered what it called a “triumphant victory.” That’s right. A victory which has ended in the unnecessary deaths of 200 women simply because they were denied essential and lifesaving healthcare. Again, there were no potential babies in any of these pregnancies.
Today, abortion is banned entirely in 13 states. Another seven banned at 12 weeks or earlier, including Florida, Georgia, Iowa, and South Carolina. States that ban at roughly six weeks, which is when many women have only recently learned they are pregnant or don’t even know they’re pregnant yet. Some of the exceptions are extremely narrow. Nine states with total bans or early gestational limits provide no exception for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. Twelve provide no exception for a fatal fetal anomaly. Five don’t even provide a broader health exception beyond circumstances involving the woman’s life.
Most abortion bans exempt ectopic pregnancies or contain some form of medical emergency exception, but an ectopic pregnancy can become dangerous before doctors can definitively prove that’s what it is. A woman can arrive in an emergency room bleeding and in pain with abnormal pregnancy hormone levels while an ultrasound still cannot show where the pregnancy exists within her body. Before the abortion ban, the patient and her doctor could decide that the danger of waiting for absolute certainty is too great and would end the pregnancy in order to save the woman’s life. Before the abortion ban, the patient and her doctor could decide that the danger to the woman’s life and health were too great to wait, regardless of whether the pregnancy were an ectopic one or not.
Under the current strict bans though, doctors now have another calculation to make. Do they have enough evidence to prove that providing an abortion is legal? In other words, do I have the luxury of finding out if this is an ectopic or a viable pregnancy? And in the interim, will that delay further endanger the woman’s life?
Eleven states with abortion bans impose criminal penalties on doctors who violate them. Doctors can face prison, massive fines, and the loss of their medical licenses. In Alabama, violating the abortion ban can carry a sentence of 10 to 99 years in prison. In Texas, it can mean a felony conviction, loss of medical license and a civil penalty of at least $100,000 for each violation. Every day spent waiting for legal certainty is another day an ectopic pregnancy can continue to grow until the fallopian tube ruptures, causing potentially catastrophic internal bleeding.
Republican Congresswoman Kat Camack of Florida has been a vocal opponent of abortion and now co-chairs the congressional so-called pro-life caucus. But in May 2024, just weeks after Florida’s six-week abortion ban took effect, Camack experienced a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy. She says hospital staff initially hesitated to give her methotrexate, an abortion medication, because they feared losing their medical licenses or potentially going to jail. But Camack didn’t blame Florida’s abortion law for creating this fear. She blamed the left, saying Democrats and the media had scared doctors and women about what the law actually allowed. Here’s what Camack said about her experience.
This is what women are experiencing because of the fear mongering around women’s healthcare, and it has to stop. The left absolutely played a role in making sure that doctors and women were scared to seek out the help that they needed. And so I think that this is a wake-up call. My story should really bring forward the national conversation that’s long overdue about the lack of maternal healthcare. And really, I think it’s important that we highlight that doctors aren’t to blame, women aren’t to blame. We need to get the politics out of women’s healthcare.
Yes, Joe Biden is to blame, obviously. Yes, we need to get the politics out of women’s healthcare, says the woman who belongs to a party that is single-handedly responsible for turning women in America into second-class citizens who do not have rights over their own bodies. Yes, let’s please take the politics and the religion out of women’s decisions about their own bodily autonomy. I love that idea. And how’s this? Let’s start with impeaching all six members of the unconstitutional, illegitimate super majority of the Supreme Court for creating a circumstance in which women can be allowed to die because doctors are afraid, because of these draconian anti-abortion laws, to treat their patients for conditions that will not under any circumstances result in the life of a child. Let’s do that, shall we?
In Florida, physicians who willfully perform an abortion outside the law could be convicted of a third degree felony, and the law requires physicians to make and document specific medical judgments to qualify for its exception. Those penalties were enacted by Florida lawmakers, not created by Democrats or the media, because Florida is a very red state, which is totally in the control of Republicans. In Texas, where one of the country’s strictest abortion bans has been in effect for several years, we now have hospital data showing what has happened to women experiencing pregnancy complications.
ProPublica obtained records covering roughly 46,000 ectopic pregnancy encounters in Texas between 2018 and 2024. In 2023 and 2024, 310 more patients experienced substantial blood loss following an ectopic pregnancy than in 2018 and 2019. That’s an increase of about 29%. Texas OB-GYNs have been warning that the state’s abortion ban isn’t just affecting access to abortion, it’s affecting the decisions doctors can make when treating pregnancy complications.
In addition to all of this, the Trump regime is dismantling crucial systems designed to track the consequences to pregnant women of these legislative changes and prevent more women from suffering. On September 16th, Washington Senator Patty Murray questioned Dr. Nicole Safier, Donald’s nominee for US Surgeon General during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee. Here’s what Senator Murray and Dr. Safier said.
Senator Murray: So it’s clear that these Republican abortion bans are killing women. So will you stick to your word? Will you advocate against abortion bans that are harming women?
Safier: Thank you for this question. Obviously, as a woman, it’s very personal to us. I have been in media for a very long time, and it is my understanding that the FDA is currently undergoing a review on the safety of mifepristone as there were some safeguards that were.
Senator Murray: I’m not asking you about that. I’m asking you about ectopic pregnancies. I’ll just tell you the facts. The United States has the highest rate of maternal mortality among wealthy nations, and these bans are killing women, permanently damaging their fertility and traumatizing them. It just seems to me that this was never about protecting women.
Because it isn’t. A lot of the women being killed by these draconian abortion bans are women who actually want to have children. These are women who are only choosing to terminate their pregnancies because either they’re ectopic ones, which have no hope of resulting in the birth of a child, or because the woman’s life is in danger or the fetus itself is not viable.
According to ProPublica, the CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health lost most of its roughly 100 employees. The entire team responsible for the pregnancy risk assessment monitoring system, a major source of maternal health data used by researchers in state and local governments, was placed on administrative leave. Because who cares in this regime about maternal health? The CDC also stopped funding a program with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that trained emergency room doctors to handle reproductive health emergencies. Ectopic pregnancies frequently become dangerous before routine prenatal care begins, meaning the emergency room may be the first place these women receive treatment.
How much worse this gets for women remains painfully unclear, especially as the Trump regime dismantles some of the very systems we rely on to find out how women are doing. Donald, on the other hand, has been remarkably clear about his role and how we got here.
Donald: Because for 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated and I did it and I’m proud to have done it.
He couldn’t care less about whether or not abortion is legal. He will just do whatever the religious fanatics want him to do because he only cares about himself.
“Too women,” you mean too MANY
Any woman who marries in states prohibiting abortions is foolhardy, any woman who willingly becomes pregnant in those states is suicidal. The unnecessary and preventable death of a woman and her unborn child is murder.