Deaths among pregnant women, new moms rose sharply

Pregnant women and new mothers died in sharply increasing numbers during the pandemic, and not just because of a rise in medical complications that may accompany pregnancy and childbirth. An even greater toll was exacted by other causes, including drug overdoses, homicides and car accidents, according to a study published Friday.

“It is really heartbreaking to see,” said Jeffrey Howard, an associate professor of public health at the University of Texas at San

Antonio and lead author of the paper, which was published in JAMA Network Open.

“There is definitely a problem in our country for women who are either pregnant or in the postpartum period, who are vulnerable and under a lot of stress,” he added. “We are failing these women as a society and failing their children.”

Maternal health is widely seen as a key indicator of a society's overall well-being. Even before the pandemic hit, the United States was the most dangerous place in the industrialized world to have a baby, with the greatest risks concentrated in Black and Native American communities.

The new report highlighted the dangers faced by Native American women, who face the greatest risks during and after pregnancy. Native American women were 3.5 times as likely to die during this critical period, compared with white women, the study found.

They were three times as likely to die of a pregnancy complication and nearly four times as likely to die of a cause unrelated to pregnancy. Native American women were five times as likely as a white women to die in car accidents during and after pregnancy, three times as likely to die of drug overdoses or homicide, and four times as likely to die of suicide.

Howard and his colleagues analyzed death certificates, which list the underlying cause of death and include a pregnancy checkbox. The certificates ask not only whether the deceased was pregnant at the time of her death, but whether she had been pregnant during the six weeks beforehand or at any point during the previous year.

The scientists identified 2,019 deaths in 2019 and 2,516 deaths in 2020 among women who were either pregnant at the time they died or had been pregnant within the past year. In 2020, there were increases in deaths related to pregnancy complications, as well as deaths from other causes.

Drugs, motor vehicle collisions, homicides and suicides were the most common of these; suicide was the only category that saw no increase in 2020 over 2019.

Of the deaths recorded in 2020 for pregnant or previously pregnant women, only 23 listed COVID-19 as the underlying cause of death (171 listed COVID as a contributing factor).