“Even if the CDC data isn\u2019t perfect, many scholars agree that far too many people are dying during and after childbirth in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have many sources of information about maternal mortality, said Laurie Zephyrin, a senior vice president for advancing health equity at the Commonwealth Fund. The CDC\u2019s National Center for Health Statistics releases the numbers that have been most debated recently, but the agency also has a Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System<\/a> that employs medical epidemiologists to comb through death records from pregnancy up to a year after birth. Meanwhile, state and local maternal mortality review committees<\/a> also independently investigate maternal deaths. \u201cAll three of these ways of collecting data are showing that we have a problem in this country,\u201d Zephyrin said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We can also understand US maternal health better by putting it an international context. Comparing maternal mortality across countries can be complex, for some of the same reasons it\u2019s complicated to count maternal deaths within the US. Some countries use a pregnancy checkbox like the one added in the US while others do not, leading to concerns<\/a> that other nations may be underreporting maternal deaths, making the US look worse<\/a> by comparison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, we know that the US lags behind other countries when it comes to policies proven to improve maternal (and overall) health. Among wealthy countries, the US is the only one without universal health care, said Munira Gunja, a senior researcher with the Commonwealth Fund\u2019s International Program in Health Policy and Practice Innovations. It’s also the only one without federally mandated paid parental leave, and it’s the only country that doesn\u2019t provide home visits and other comprehensive postpartum care, instead often limiting birthing people to a lone doctor\u2019s appointment<\/a> six weeks after birth. \u201cThe US is a clear outlier, particularly when it comes to postpartum support,\u201d Gunja said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, everyone involved in the debate over counting maternal deaths agrees that Black birthing people are dying at a disproportionately high rate. That disparity shows up whether you use the CDC\u2019s method or Joseph\u2019s, and it\u2019s indicative of bigger problems within the US health care system, experts say. Black Americans in general have a lower life expectancy<\/a> than white Americans, and Black babies are more likely to be stillborn<\/a> or die in infancy. \u201cThis is across the board, not just in maternal health,\u201d said Angela D. Aina, co-founder and executive director of the Black Mamas Matter Alliance<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some have argued that the language of \u201ccrisis\u201d is unproductive, frightening pregnant people and prospective parents and clouding the search for solutions. \u201cThe constant drumbeat that maternal mortality is \u2018commonplace<\/a>\u2019 and that pregnancy is \u2018deadly<\/a>\u2019 doesn\u2019t empower me with information to make my own decisions,\u201d Jerusalem Demsas writes at the Atlantic<\/a>. \u201cIt just stresses me out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reasonable people can disagree over what constitutes a crisis and over the best way to measure how often Americans experience the tragic situation in which a person who is already sick dies from their illness after giving birth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But experts do not disagree on the basic premise that too many pregnant and birthing people are dying in America, that many of their deaths are preventable, and that we already know some of the reforms \u2014 from paid leave<\/a> to better prenatal and postpartum care<\/a> \u2014 that would save their lives.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n