They Had the Drug. They Had the Test. The Babies Still Died.

Congenital syphilis was nearly gone. Then we dismantled everything that made that possible.

Skylar, a 32-year-old from Arkansas, found out she was pregnant with her first child in November. A month later, routine first-trimester blood tests delivered news she never saw coming. Her doctor called to say she had tested positive on an RPR test — a syphilis screening that detects antibodies the body produces in response to infection — and a confirmation test left no doubt.

“I felt healthy and was in shock this was happening,” she tells me.

I was shocked by the story, and the many I was reading on pregnancy forums as I prepare to welcome my second. Every time I went in for routine prenatal bloodwork, I also noticed syphilis was tested along with the expected white blood cell count, iron, etc. Confused, under the assumption this was a disease from long ago, I asked my doctor why.

“It’s becoming a huge problem again,” she said. “So, we are trying to make sure it is never missed in screening.”

Curious, I went home and dug into the numbers, and I couldn’t let it go. I knew it was something I needed to write about, to explore further.