Sen. Kamala Harris continues to bring more awareness to the high rate of maternal mortality in Black women during her time in Washington.
This past summer, the California senator introduced the Maternal CARE Act, a bill with the goal of reducing racial biases in maternal health care. According to the Huffington Post, the bill “creates incentives for medical schools to educate students about racial bias in maternal health care so that it can be prevented in the future.”
“Black women in America are three to four times more like to die than white women because they choose to become mothers and want to raise those children to be productive members of society,” Harris said on Wednesday at a Center for American Progress event.
The U.S had the worst rate of maternal deaths in the developed world — which is only rising — and Black women were at the center of this epidemic. Black women are 243 percent more likely than white women to die from pregnancy or pregnancy-related complications, according to Pro Publica.
Harris, who many think will run for the presidency in 2020, will also be releasing her first book, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey” in January 2019.
“At its core, one of the biggest parts of the problem is that this is an issue that’s about race,” she said. “And this is an issue that’s also about implicit bias.”
