A “Never Event” Is Killing Women

September 10, 2026

How Dobbs has changed ectopic pregnancy care ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

September 10, 2026

Greetings, Meteor readers,

Y’all. My favorite time of the year is coming, and I just hope all of you are ready to hear me talk about Fat Bear Week all month. I actually have a countdown to make sure I am up bright and early for Fat Bear bracket reveal day. I’m rooting for the return of two-time champion Grazer.

MY HOME GIRL GRAZER, WILL SHE TAKE THE CROWN THIS YEAR? (SCREENSHOT VIA EXPLORE.ORG)

In today’s newsletter, Dr. Dara Kass helps explain a concerning rise in ectopic pregnancy deaths. Plus, another great doctor helps us understand the UN climate report.

Bears rule,

Shannon Melero

WHAT’S GOING ON

“Legally protected in every single state”: Yesterday, ProPublica released an analysis of CDC data finding that ectopic pregnancy-related deaths have doubled in the United States. Between 2020 and 2025, roughly 200 women died, compared to around 100 deaths in the previous six years. But Dr. Dara Kass, an emergency medicine physician, was not surprised. “We knew this was gonna happen,” she says. Three years ago, Kass had been an author on a research paper examining the then-early impact of Dobbs on the treatment of ectopic pregnancies. The paper saw the beginnings of what the ProPublica analysis confirms: Abortion bans are creating delays in care across the country, even in states that don’t have bans.

Firstly, with appropriate diagnosis and care, “it should be a never event to die from an ectopic pregnancy,” Kass says. While ectopic pregnancies can become fatal, they are extremely treatable when diagnosed early. The only treatment is termination, as ectopic pregnancies are not viable and can, says Kass, “kill you quickly” if left unattended. People who don’t know that they’re pregnant or don’t seek care can die from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. “But if somebody is presented to the healthcare system, pregnant with abdominal pain, vaginal bleeding, suspicion of ectopic pregnancy, there is no world in which they should be lost to the system before treatment,” she says

Technically, even the strictest abortion bans allow doctors to administer lifesaving treatments, which is what terminating an ectopic pregnancy is. So why did 200 women die preventable deaths in the last five years?

Because despite what the laws say, doctors still fear criminal prosecution. “Doctors feel the need to be able to defend [the diagnosis of ectopic pregnancy] in court, even though nobody’s ever made them go to court” over an abortion that was part of emergency care, says Dr. Kass. She adds that doctors’ fear is stoked by a lack of reassurance from state legislatures that doctors won’t need to go above and beyond to defend a diagnosis, as well as a gap in education on state-based laws for emergency room doctors.

So that is almost certainly why the death rate has spiked up in states with abortion bans. But it has also done so in abortion-friendly states—and there, the reasons are more complex. The ProPublica analysis identifies a number of factors, including the Trump administration’s cuts to maternal health staff at HHS and the elimination of CDC funding for programs that offer guidance to emergency physicians dealing with obstetrics cases.

Another major factor, according to Kass? Catholic hospitals.

“That doesn’t usually cross anyone’s mind,” Kass tells me, “but there are stories of people who have been denied care for ectopic pregnancies because they sought that care in a Catholic hospital.” The decision-making process around care at religious health institutions is “more aligned with what happens in a state with restrictions,” even if that hospital is in, say, Connecticut or California.

And the number of Catholic hospitals has grown; as of 2020, nearly two in five women of reproductive age lived in a place where the only available care was from a religious-based institution. Today, Kass is researching the “penetration of Catholic hospital systems” across the country, particularly those facilities that are “presenting themselves as critical-access hospitals” in rural areas.

In order to prevent this problem from getting any worse, the entire medical community needs to, as Kass says, “get on the same page” and remain steady in the knowledge that termination is the only way to save lives during an ectopic pregnancy. And regardless of their location, remember that abortion for “ectopic pregnancy is legally protected care in every single state.

AND:

It’s been a year since the killing of Charlie Kirk, and some of the people who lost their jobs for speaking about it are still unemployed, reports The Intercept. One woman, former college professor Emily Taylor, was fired after writing an op-ed in Ms. about violence and American masculinity. She tells reporters, “The chances that I ever have tenure-track employment again doesn’t seem likely.”
Haven’t gotten around to reading the UN’s (very scary) climate report? Don’t worry, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson did it for you.
Dr. Brittney Cooper grappled with Gloria Steinem’s legacy on UNDISTRACTED this week, addressing questions of Steinem’s Cold War-era involvement with the CIA (a period that sparked controversy among feminists even at the time) and accusations of white feminism. While Dr. Cooper conceded that she, a Black feminist, is “not particularly here for white women,” she did offer a word of advice: “Mark your meaning to movements by the quality of your relationships,” citing Steinem’s alliances with Angela Davis and bell hooks. “if you have credible relationships with Black feminist organizers who we know have changed the world,” she said, “that’s good enough for me.”
In Santurce, a neighborhood in Puerto Rico, having water is now an “exception,” residents say.
Tomorrow night, for the first time in U.S. Open history, two Black men will face each other in the semifinal round. Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe will be tearing the non-existent roof off of Arthur Ashe Stadium to see who will be the first Black man since Ashe himself to reach the finals. I won’t say who I’m rooting for…but there will be signs.

APOLOGIES TO MY COLLEAGUE TARA BUT I MUST FOLLOW MY HEART. I LOVE THEM BOTH, THOUGH! (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Does someone want to loan me a couple hundred thousand dollars? There’s this thing up for sale….
Okay, you know the sex recession is real when even Sharon “Have you ever fucked on cocaine?” Stone is celibate.
Do call it a comeback.
How soon is this getting turned into a 30 for 30, because the people don’t want it; they need it.

ONE MORE THING

Tomorrow marks 25 years since the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. It’s always been a complex anniversary, one full of grief for lives lost that day, but also the wars and Islamophobia of the years that followed. (As Susan Sontag memorably wrote in The New Yorker not long after 9/11: “Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen.”) Today, we’re learning more about these daycare teachers who became heroes that day, and honoring those who have tirelessly fought for justice for first responders and other survivors. And, heeding Sontag, still trying to understand.