NBC News
The number of women going through pregnancy without prenatal care is rising, even though the overall number of babies born in the United States is declining, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The unbalanced trend, revealed in a report by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics on Tuesday, may partly reflect the growing number of women unable to access obstetric care after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
“In many counties, you can’t even find a prenatal care provider,” said Dr. Brenna Hughes, executive vice chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “If you have limited resources and you have to travel to be able to access prenatal care, that’s going to be a deterrent.”
The percentage of mothers without any prenatal care rose from 2.2% in 2022 to 2.3% in 2023, according to the CDC’s analysis of birth certificates. Even that slight increase could be detrimental to the health of the mother and baby, said Dr. Kathryn Lindley, a cardio-obstetrician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
“There is a lot of baby monitoring that goes on during pregnancy, to help us identify any potential health problems,” such as birth defects or unusually high blood pressure, she added.
“Pregnancy-related hypertension can lead to serious illness or death by causing complications like stroke or seizures or heart attacks,” Lindley said. “It’s really important that all of these things are identified and managed to make sure that both mother and baby have a healthy outcome.”
Less births
Nearly 3.6 million babies were born in the United States last year, down 2% from the number expected in 2022, according to a CDC analysis.
The decline resumes a decades-long decline in births, after a slight uptick during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have been due to restrictions on going out or a lack of access to contraceptives in pharmacies or medical offices.
The number of adolescents giving birth also decreased. From 2022 to 2023, the birth rate among 15- to 19-year-olds decreased by 4%, from 13.6 to 13.1 births per 1,000 adolescents.
The rate among 15- to 17-year-old girls appears to have stagnated, hovering around 5.6% since 2021. Still, experts are optimistic.
“Overall, this is positive,” said Dr. Allison Bryant, associate chief of health equity at Mass General Brigham and a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Mass General Hospital in Boston. “I’m encouraged by the fact that, for now, this seems to be continuing to decline.”
