In April, during a congressional hearing that coincided with Black Maternal Health Week, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about the US’ abysmal and largely preventable rates of maternal death compared to its peers.

Black women, Lee pointed out, fare three times worse than their white counterparts, even as the Trump administration continues to cut both health funding and research into racial health disparities.

She posed a question: “How are we going to solve the Black maternal mortality crisis if we cannot say ‘Black’?”

The GOP’s attacks on Medicaid—which finances health care for more than two in five births across the country—and the White House’s termination of thousands of federal health and science workers, including those tasked with compiling the country’s most comprehensive data on maternal and infant health, give even more weight to independent research like Listening to Mothers, a nationwide survey published by the nonprofit National Partnership for Women and Families on Monday.

The report—the group’s first nationwide survey since 2013—surveys thousands of mothers who gave birth in a hospital in 2023 and 2024 about their experiences with the maternal care system, revealing pervasive barriers to quality care and widespread failures by health systems.

The report ends by warning that “modest gains” like expanded postpartum Medicaid coverage “are now at risk of being rolled back.”

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