Advocates For Black Maternal Health Press NC General Assembly To Approve ‘MOMnibus’ Legislation

(NC Newsline, Clayton Henkel) – On the week that North Carolina senators were busy rolling out a $32.6B spending plan, it was difficult to gain attention for legislation that some consider a longshot this session. But Senator Natalie Murdock (D-Chatham, Durham) refused to allow budget week to shift her focus from what she sees as the critical need to pass a bill crafted to improve Black maternal health outcomes.

The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. And Black women in the U.S. are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related health problems than white women.

Murdock has repeated those sobering facts for more than three years now, as she tries to get the Republican-controlled Senate to advance the MOMnibus 3.0 Act.

Battling perceptions and negative stereotypes

Gabriel Scott, an MPA with the North Carolina Coalition of the National Council of Negro Women, joined Murdock last week in advocating for Senate Bill 571/House Bill 725.

Scott said when she went into labor at 25 weeks, doctors were dismissive.

“I needed pain medication, I needed help, I needed something. They did not listen.”

After she delivered her twins, complications with the placenta and an excessive loss of blood, left her husband terrified she might need a blood transfusion.

“They finally had an anesthesiologist come to give me medication. My husband said, can you at least tell me what the medication is? And the anesthesiologist laughed and said, ‘Oh, this is typically medicine we give to war vets who have had limbs blown off,’” Scott recounted. “They took it as a joke. The doctor continued to shove his arm in me.”

Hours later in recovery, a white female doctor came to her room acknowledging the difficulty of the delivery.

“And she said, there are things that we know we do well at the hospital and then there are things that we know we don’t do well, and one of those things is our treatment of African-American women and childbirth.”

The same doctor suggested both she and her husband might seek mental health help.

Scott gives thanks to God that her twin girls are healthy. But she’s been dealing with pelvic pain for over four years and the trauma of doctors who didn’t listen to her.

Dr. Charity Watkins, an assistant professor of social work at North Carolina Central University and a maternal health researcher at Duke University, shared her own terrifying story of pregnancy-related heart failure.

“I always feel it is important for me to introduce myself using my professional roles. Maybe my doctoral degree will save me from the daily mistreatment I experienced because of my dark complexion. Maybe leaning into the perceived prestige of being a professor will protect me from poor perceptions and negative stereotypes associated with being a Black woman,” Watkins told a room of reporters on Wednesday.

After her pregnancy, Watkins presented with classic heart failure symptoms, a family history of heart disease, and a recent cesarean delivery followed by hemorrhaging.

She was told by a doctor that maybe it was the flu.

“What could have led to me receiving quality health care without having to prove I’m worthy of being treated as a human being?”

MOMnibus 3.0

Watkins believes the MOMnibus 3.0 Act would have changed her birth story, with doctors who would not have dismissed her as being over-dramatic or “just another Black woman exaggerating her pain levels.”

The legislation would direct the NC Department of Health and Human Services to establish and operate a maternal mortality prevention grant initiative that would establish or expand programs for the prevention of maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity among Black women.

“It’s time for us to provide Black mothers with more confidence in their care before, during, and after childbirth,” said Watkins.

The legislation would also require NCDHHS, in collaboration with community-based organizations led by Black women and a historically Black college and universities (HBCUs) that primarily serves minority populations to create evidence-based implicit bias training program for health care professionals.

Patients receiving care at a perinatal care facility would also receive a list of their rights including being informed of continuing health care requirements following discharge.

The bill would also earmark $3 million for each year of the 2025-27 biennium for the UNC Board of Governors for recruiting, training, and retaining a diverse workforce of lactation consultants in North Carolina.

Reps. Zack Hawkins (D-Durham) and Julie von Haefen (D-Wake) are advocating for HB 725, the companion bill in the state House.

Hawkins said his two sisters and his wife had their own stories in which doctors were not “listening appropriately” to their pain, and the fact that they knew their own bodies.

Von Haefen said while it may not seem like her place to speak on Black health, she also knew she could not turn away.

“This should not be something that’s put solely on Black women. White women need to be allies in this fight, because we are all mothers.”

In North Carolina Black women are 1.8 times more likely to die from childbirth, two-thirds of these deaths are preventable, according to Murdock.