Maternal health in the United States has been much in the news lately with developments that challenge media stereotypes. The first story of note came at the beginning of February with the release of new data on maternal mortality from the National Center for Health Statistics. Presenting national data from 2023, author Donna L. Hoyert reported that the overall rate of maternal mortality fell 17% in the first full year after the Supreme Court decision that overturned the 1973 abortion rulings. The new numbers are the best the nation has seen since 2018 and are an encouraging development.

As always in an area where the media mindset is hostile, some outlets were not content to report the CDC results straightforwardly. As Dartmouth- and Stanford-trained senior statistician Michael New pointed out after release of the report, headlines in the “mainstream” media — Yahoo!, the Associated Press, PBS, and CBS News — did not mention the decrease in maternal mortality in the first year post-Dobbs, but focused instead on racial disparities in the mortality rate or an increase in the rate among African American women. The report itself described the latter as “not statistically significant.”

There is also the fact, which abortion-friendly media blithely overlook, that African American women in the United States have much higher rates of abortion than the rest of the population. If abortion were, as a threshold matter, helpful in reducing maternal mortality, it would seem likely it would show up in a context where African American women’s resort to abortion was 4.3 times (at 24.4 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 2022) higher than that of white women. Instead, the cohort with the highest abortion rate also has the highest maternal mortality rate nationally.

The CDC report offers other insights worth discussing — and has limitations worth recognizing. First, the report does not provide state-by-state data, making an already difficult task of associating rates with public policy variations impossible. Second, while even a single maternal death, whatever its associated causes, is tragic and worthy of preventive interventions, the overall maternal death rate is, as the CDC author states, “relatively small.” Exaggeration of the danger of giving birth in 2025 is an all-too-common feature in anti-life propaganda.

In addition, as the author also notes, persistent concerns exist about “the accuracy of reporting maternal deaths on death certificates.” Would a maternal death occurring due to mental health factors downstream from abortion, for example, be picked up in the data? The smaller the number of deaths the larger an impact any inaccuracies like these would have on the analysis. Problems with national data on abortion itself compound the challenge, one that may be worsening in an era of rising self-managed abortions.

Another factor stands out that received little attention in reporting on the CDC numbers. Stratified by maternal age, maternal deaths rise dramatically as women get older. The new CDC report shows that the overall maternal death rate for non-Hispanic white women was 14.5 per 100,000 live births. For Hispanic women, the rate was 12.4 deaths for 100,000 live births, and for Asian women, it was 10.7. For African American women it was 50.3 deaths per 100,000 live births. However, for women under age 25 the death rate was 12.5 per 100,000 births, while for women over 40 the rate was nearly five times higher at 59.8 deaths per 100,000 births. Even so, the death rate at this later stage of life declined in 2023 from 2022, when it was 87.1. All of these factors should give us pause about ascribing causation too readily, but the media’s failure to treat the 2023 report as generally good news is altogether emblematic of bias.

More to the point, one hopes, is the fact that states, particularly pro-life states, are aware of the urgency and complexity of the gaps in maternity care that need attention and are responding accordingly. Moreover, the trends regarding this challenge seem genuinely bipartisan in many cases. The leading example is the policy change over the past several years that has extended Medicaid coverage of postpartum care for a full year after childbirth from what, for many states, was a much shorter coverage period.

During the Biden years, Congress passed legislation authorizing states to amend their plans to provide coverage for a full year after birth. Prior to this change, states could secure the extended coverage via the filing of a waiver with the federal Department of Health and Human Services. As a result, 49 states and the District of Columbia have now expanded their Medicaid coverage. Nationally, four of every 10 births occur to women on Medicaid, indicating how broad an impact this policy change will likely have.

Naturally, this prompts the question: which is the 50th state, and what is it doing? The answer is Arkansas, and it is acting in a swift and bipartisan way. On February 6, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) hosted a “Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies” press event to herald the introduction of legislation that will inject about $45 million a year in new maternal health funding in the state Medicaid program. Roughly half of all babies in Arkansas are born to mothers on Medicaid. Components of the new program include:

• $7.44 million for the inauguration of presumptive eligibility for pregnant women so they can obtain prenatal care (now often delayed) while their Medicaid applications are pending. A portion of these funds will also go to address the challenge of providing maternity care for mothers at some remove from clinicians, including doulas, community health workers, and provision for ultrasounds and other monitoring services;
• $12.2 million for unbundling of Medicaid pregnancy care, providing for up to 14 prenatal and postnatal care visits and encouraging women to make and keep more of their appointments; and
• $25.7 million in increased investments in coverage for traditional deliveries and C-sections, aimed at encouraging more providers to participate in Medicaid.

Huckabee commented on the proposed legislation, “[T]he Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies Act will make real, lasting change to Arkansas’ maternal health landscape and move the needle on this critical issue facing our state.” What, then, about the extension of Medicaid coverage up to a full year? Huckabee believes the other investments made by the Act will address that need. The lead Democratic cosponsor of the measure, state Rep. Ashley Hudson (D) of Little Rock, told the Arkansas Advocate, “Obviously I’d like to see the 12-month postpartum coverage included, but at this point, we know that we have a maternal health crisis, we need to be doing something. So I’m not going to throw out good in search of great. I’m looking forward to seeing the changes that we get from this bill and the improved outcomes for moms.”

Arkansas is clearly not the only state to be advancing fresh measures to support maternal health and reduce infant mortality as well. In Mississippi, Attorney General Lynn Fitch (R), who led the legal fight that resulted in the Dobbs ruling, has added the Empowerment Project to an array of initiatives in her state to protect children and promote life-affirming options for mothers. Mississippi recently had its first baby surrendered to a safe haven baby box. Her Empowerment proposal, announced on the eve of the March for Life in Washington, D.C., includes legislation for paid parental leave for state employees, improved child support enforcement including potential use of casino-generated revenue, and fixes to the state’s foster care and adoption systems.

These and initiatives in other states point the way to making consensus progress on providing timelier prenatal care to women in difficult circumstances. Abortion advocates’ suggestion that abortion is the answer to challenges like the lack of proximity to prenatal care and other individual health issues, including relationship and economic status, seems brutal. For the longer term, recognition is growing that the nation faces a shortage of physicians of all kinds. People with maximal skills who once again deserve, even as they do not seek, to be esteemed in our society.

The Association of American Medical Colleges’ March 2024 study projects a shortfall of 86,000 physicians by 2036. In terms of the duration of medical training and the complexity of planning and executing medical education, 2036 is not a remote date. Advocates for life know on a worldwide basis how shortages in these areas drive the push for patient-punishing steps like abortion and assisted suicide.

In the coming years, patterns will continue to emerge that allow the laboratory of the states, and the initiative of private actors now expanding and opening new medical schools, to demonstrate what policies and practices protect life and promote maternal and family health. It is imperative that states and the nation, particularly the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) institute and refine policies that allow us to examine what works and what doesn’t. Getting the media to share the full truth about these subjects, of course, may take a little longer.