By Dr. Robert O Connor and Dr. Amy Ferguson
Mar 15, 2021
Like the rest of the United States, Iowa is facing a maternal health crisis. The maternal mortality rate in Iowa has almost doubled in recent years and significant racial disparities exist. Black mothers in Iowa have a pregnancy-related maternal mortality over six times higher than their white counterparts.
But Iowa lawmakers have the chance to pass legislation that could reduce maternal mortality rates and improve outcomes for mothers. Extending the Medicaid postpartum coverage period from the current 60 days to a full 12 months is the simplest and most targeted way to ensure that new mothers can get the care they need to help keep them and their baby healthy.
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Days away from giving birth after a high-risk pregnancy, Kiki Van Newtown has experienced first-hand the dire state of our maternal health services. She’s calling on the government to take urgent action.
It’s late on the maternity ward at Wellington Hospital, and I’m curled onto a couch at the end of a dark hallway, trying to figure out a way to explain why every person having a baby, and every baby born, deserves to have the very best support that society can provide. The words aren’t coming even remotely easily, and I’m realising that this feels like begging for scraps. That it doesn’t matter how poetic or visionary my writing is, that appealing to our government to pull us out of the current maternity crisis is not a new call – this crisis has been decades in the making. No amount of hopeful euphemisms or metaphors are going to save us.