Threats on All Fronts

Abortion access goes hand in hand with policies like Medicaid coverage, including in the postpartum period, and economic policies that support the ability to both work and care for oneself and one's family, including paid family and medical leave, paid sick days, fair pay, raising the minimum wage, pregnancy accommodations, and fair scheduling. Each of these policies is necessary to provide the foundation for women and their families to thrive.

State Abortion Bans Could Harm Nearly 15 Million Women of Color

The Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision means 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion. Our analysis, building on work by In Our Own Voice and Planned Parenthood, finds that Black and Native American women are the most likely to live in these 26 states and are thus especially harmed by Dobbs. Women with disabilities, women veterans, and women who are economically insecure are also disproportionately likely to live in these states.

Improving Our Maternity Care Now Through Community Birth Settings

More pregnant people are taking control of their childbirth experience by choosing to birth in a community setting such as birth centers and planned home births.

Research shows that care provided in community birth settings can make a concrete difference in improving maternity care quality and producing better outcomes, including for People of Color.

Choosing Health Equity

Choosing Health Equity was designed to surface the numerous decision points that exist in the cycle of health care research, policy and practice — to disrupt standard processes in order to achieve a healthier, equitable, and just society.

Explore the tools and resources today.

Saving the Lives of Moms and Babies

We've joined the National Birth Equity Collaborative to produce a series of resources that connects the dots between how different socioeconomic factors affect maternal and infant health, the outsize impact these factors have on BIPOC communities, and recommendations to effect the change we need to ensure all moms and babies thrive.

Called to Care

The National Partnership recently released Called to Care: A Racially Just Recovery Demands Paid Family and Medical Leave, which finds that the lack of national paid leave exacerbates harms to the health and economic lives of people of color, particularly women, before and during the pandemic.

The report takes a close look at how people of color have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, yet are less likely to be able to take paid time off of work to care for themselves or a loved one.

Improving Our Maternity Care Now

The U.S. maternity care system fails to provide many childbearing people and newborns with equitable, respectful, safe, effective, and affordable care. More people die per capita as a result of pregnancy and childbirth in this country than in any other high-income country.

This report lifts up four care models decisionmakers must implement for healthier moms and babies.

Too many Black women are dying in pregnancy and childbirth

We need systemic change to end this crisis and ensure communities are healthier and more responsive to Black women's needs.

Click the link below to learn more about the disparities and how we can help Black women have the safe and healthy pregnancies and childbirth they deserve.