Today, the National Partnership for Women & Families, in partnership with MomsRising and the Black Mamas Matter Alliance, released the fourth national Listening to Mothers survey, the most comprehensive of its kind in a decade. Based on responses from 3,857 mothers of infants and toddlers across the country, the report places the experiences of pregnant people and new mothers at the center of the maternal health conversation and policy debate
“The estimated out-of-pocket costs for most mothers are $2,700 with insurance, according to Erin McKay, managing director of health justice at the National Partnership for Women & Families. Without insurance, those costs are typically $19,000.
“McKay said the financial challenges facing parents having a child is something many families are running into.
“’Nothing in the health care system is simple. But the two main reasons that I keep coming back to with regard to the high costs of childbirth are because we are paying for care that does not improve care for moms and babies, and a scarcity of reproductive and maternal health care drives up costs,’ McKay said.”
“In 2006, 3% of women in the U.S. got care from a doula during labor, according to a survey conducted for the nonprofit Childbirth Connection, now a program of the National Partnership for Women & Families. That figure has doubled or tripled since then, researchers estimate.”
“’So far, 22 states and Washington, DC, have created some version of shield protections; eight of those states, including New York and California, have adopted laws that explicitly protect people who provide or facilitate abortion care via telemedicine. The laws have proven to be ‘one of the strongest tools that reproductive freedom advocates have to protect abortion access in a post-Roe reality,’ says Ashley Kurzweil, a senior policy analyst at the National Partnership for Women & Families. ‘It’s painfully obvious that anti-abortion extremists are targeting shield laws because they are working.’”
“In the first year of the second Trump administration, there has been a barrage of harmful executive orders, the appointment of dangerous and unqualified political nominees, and the unprecedented firing of federal employees, along with restructuring or near elimination of many federal agencies.”
“A National Partnership for Women & Families analysis from June warned that 131 rural hospitals with labor and delivery units are at risk of closing altogether due to Republican-led cuts to Medicaid through President Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill.’”
“Since its introduction in 2010, the ACA has been instrumental in cutting the share of uninsured Americans from approximately 15% to 8%, according to Nima Sheth, vice president of health justice at the National Partnership for Women & Families, a nonprofit advocacy group.”
“Further, with more than a dozen states having a near or total abortion ban, the VA remained the last place for veterans to receive abortion services—and most of these abortion-banned states are where more than half of all women veterans live, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families.”
“While a lot of the states have the goal of reducing maternal health disparities and know the disproportionate impact on Black birthing people in particular,” said Amani Echols, lead author of the analysis and Senior Manager of Maternal and Infant Health at NPWF.
“As Jocelyn Frye, president of the National Partnership on Women & Families, sees it, the treatment Wells received was reprehensible. ‘This was not a new story. It is an old story, and it is something that is entirely preventable, and that is even more frustrating.’”
“Ashley Kurzweil, senior policy analyst for reproductive health and rights at the National Partnership for Women & Families, said the dual threat that Paxton’s lawsuit presented was alarming on a much wider scale than just reproductive health care, so it is a relief that the case is dismissed.”
“Almost 100 are located in counties that have no other source of obstetric care besides the hospital, according to a forthcoming analysis from the National Partnership for Women & Families, an advocacy group. White, Native American and low-income women are especially likely to lose their sole source of care.”
“For instance, this spring the National Partnership for Women & Families published a series of blog posts highlighting the lifesaving impact of Medicaid on not only the authors but also their loved ones.”
The National Partnership for Women & Families announced that Nima Sheth has joined the organization as Vice President for Health Justice.
NPWF President Jocelyn C. Frye testified before the House of Representatives’ Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, the Democratic Women’s Caucus and other House leaders at a hearing on “The Cost of Care – Strengthening the Care Economy and Protecting the ACA
“’It’s harrowing that law enforcement is weaponizing automatic license plate reader technology for pregnancy policing. But given the surge of investigations and prosecutions targeting people for their pregnancy outcomes post-Dobbs, this surveillance ploy comes as no surprise. Reproductive dragnets are not hypothetical concerns. These surveillance tactics open the door for overzealous, anti-abortion state actors to amass data to build cases against people for their abortion care and pregnancy outcomes,’ said Ashley Kurzweil, Senior Policy Analyst for Reproductive Health and Rights for the National Partnership for Women & Families. ‘Law enforcement exploitation of mass surveillance infrastructure for reproductive health criminalization promises to be increasingly disruptive to the entire abortion access and pregnancy care landscape. The prevalence of these harmful data practices and risks of legal action drive real fear among abortion seekers and helpers – even intimidating people from getting the care they need.’”
“’Having these cuts is something that’s going to limit that access for a lot of Black women out there, and that’s something that will have a ripple effect on maternal mortality and morbidity,’ said Rolonda Donelson, a reproductive health equity legal fellow at the National Partnership for Women & Families.”
“Following Medina, Medicaid providers and enrollees will have few practical options for challenging state decisions about Medicaid funding and benefits. Medina is especially relevant to reproductive health services providers, and individuals seeking reproductive health care. Medicaid is the largest single payer of reproductive and maternal health services in the United States. According to the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, it covers nearly 41% of all births nationwide, and the National Partnership for Women & Families states nearly 24 million women receive health insurance through the program. Post Medina, states may pursue policies to limit Medicaid spending on reproductive health care services.”
“Though the transition from home to the hospital was made in the name of safety, it dramatically increased maternal mortality rates. That was ‘due to poor practitioner training, excessive interventions, and the failure to implement aseptic techniques,’ says Carol Sakala , who leads maternal health and maternity care programming at the National Partnership for Women &Families, a non-profit, non-partisan advocacy organization.”
“Jocelyn Frye, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, said that there needs to be more support for women at all stages of caregiving and all kinds of work statuses to make sure women are economically and socially secure. Childcare, eldercare, and other family support policies that only focus on people in traditional employment, and require immediate attachment to work, leave behind people who are self-employed, seasonally employed, and have nontraditional employment statuses—many of whom are women, she said. There are better alternatives; policies that include women who face intimate partner violence issues. A federal bill, for example, would ensure that people can take paid sick time as a result of intimate partner violence.”
