The Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee will be tasked with providing recommendations to improving health outcomes and reducing deaths and complications from childbirth. Maternal deaths in the U.S. are five times as high as Sweden, and African-American women are almost four times as likely to die as white American women.
Rep. Janelle Bynum said that when her mother was born in Jim Crow South Carolina in the 1950s, her grandmother wasn’t allowed to give birth in a hospital. The law segregated them off in a separate and unequal birthing center instead.