More and more pregnant women are delaying prenatal care until late in the pregnancy process or foregoing it altogether, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC’s analysis of birth certificate data, released Thursday, revealed that in 2024, 75.5% of pregnant women in the United States received medical care during the first trimester. In 2021, 78.3% received early prenatal care.
Prenatal care starting in the second trimester increased from 15.4% in 2021 to 17.3% in 2024. And the percentage of women receiving prenatal care very late or no care increased from 6.3% to 7.3% during the same period.
This is a notable change from a decade ago.when the percentage of women receiving prenatal care increased overall between 2016 and 2021, according to the report.
The report does not address the reasons for these changes.
The pandemic may have influenced the delay in care. It has also been documented that an increasing number of women were unable to access obstetric and gynecological care after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Additionally, a 2024 March of Dimes report found that more than a third of counties in the United States can be considered “maternity care deserts,” meaning they do not have any doctors, nurses, midwives, or medical centers specializing in this field.
Dr. Mya Zapata, an obstetrician-gynecologist at UCLA Health who was not involved in the new research, added that she wondered if distrust of the medical establishment or the government had played a role.
“We have a large portion of patients in the Los Angeles area whose legal documentation is unclear,” Zapata said. “They may be hesitant to receive medical care.”
However, the new report found that the tendency to delay prenatal care or not receive it was widely observed among all women of childbearing ageregardless of age and race.
In 36 states and Washington, DC, there was an increase in the number of women delaying their first visit to the OB-GYN or not receiving prenatal care. In Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, New Mexico and Texas, more than one in ten pregnant women met those criteria.
The six states where access to prenatal care improved were primarily in the Midwest and South: Arkansas, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
The report’s author said preliminary data from 2025 suggests some improvements in access to prenatal care, but cautioned that this could change once the data is finalized this summer.
Dr. Brenna Hughes, interim chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the new research, said, “There are many reasons why prenatal care is important. The sooner we can see patients, the sooner we can begin interventions that can improve these long-term outcomes.”
Why is early prenatal care important?
Doctor visits are essential throughout pregnancy, for both the mother’s and baby’s health, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Early prenatal care in particular, that is, seeing a doctor during the first months of pregnancy, allows doctors to evaluate patients for risks that could complicate the pregnancy.
Urinary tract infections, for example, can lead to premature birth and even sepsis if left untreated.
And it is essential to ensure that a woman receives proper treatment for diabetesZapata said, because pregnancy hormones make blood sugar regulation much more difficult.
“In the first trimester, if a person’s blood sugar levels are no longer regulated, that means there is more circulating in their blood all the time, and that affects the development of fetal organs,” he explained.
Seeing a doctor in the early weeks of pregnancy also helps identify patients at risk for preeclampsia, a life-threatening condition that causes dangerously high blood pressure during the later stages of pregnancy.
It is recommended that these patients begin taking low-dose aspirin as soon as they enter the second trimester, at 12 weeks of gestation.
“If you don’t start prenatal care until 14 weeks of gestation, you’ve already missed the opportunity to start that preventative measure early in pregnancy,” Hughes added, “at a time when it’s probably most important.”
