Maternal deaths are mostly preventable, and voters across the aisle agree on the fix
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A new national poll from the bipartisan campaign Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America found that more than 80% of voters back nearly every solution on the table.
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Having a baby in America is more dangerous than in any other wealthy country, and the danger doesn’t end in the delivery room. Pregnancy-related deaths happen before, during, and in 33% of cases, within the year after, when appointments thin out and everyone assumes the hard part is over. Cardiac trouble, blood clots, preeclampsia and postpartum depression can surface weeks or months after a mother is home, long after the medical attention has tapered off.
Most of those deaths didn’t have to happen. The CDC estimates 87% of pregnancy-related deaths at all stages are preventable. They happen because the care meant to catch them leaves gaps. A skipped prenatal visit because the closest obstetrician is counties away. A warning sign that’s not screened for. A six-week appointment that’s the last time anyone checks up on a new mom at all.
The fixes aren’t complicated: a full year of postpartum care; nurse home visits in the first two weeks; telehealth appointments so women in rural areas and high-risk scenarios don’t have to drive 90 minutes to see a doctor; and more providers overall to fill the gaps that too-few OBs leave behind.
The public supports these solutions. A new national maternal health poll from the bipartisan campaign Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America found that more than 80% of voters back nearly every solution on the table, including a full year of postpartum coverage and nurse home visits in the first two weeks, with support holding across party, region, age and gender.
“We require a car seat before a newborn can leave the hospital, so why do we send new mothers home with little more than a glib ‘see you in six weeks’?” Asks Olivia Walton, the philanthropist who founded the campaign. We talked with Walton about what the numbers reveal and what it will take to finally close the gaps.
The most dangerous time is after birth
The six-week checkup is supposed to be the all-clear. A provider confirms you’re healing on schedule and signs off, and that’s generally the end of pregnancy and postpartum care.
But ticking off those boxes on the calendar doesn’t mean a mom is out of the woods. She’s now running on little sleep, healing from a major medical event and keeping a newborn alive–and yet, almost no one is tracking how she’s doing. Not surprisingly, many moms also struggle with maternal mental health challenges at this time. About 1 in 5 mothers deals with anxiety, depression or birth-related PTSD (all issues that can arise in the postnatal period), and Walton calls even that a conservative estimate.
If a nurse visits the house in the first two weeks, Walton says, much of what goes wrong gets caught early. “These nurses catch hemorrhages, infections and blood pressure spikes before they lead to emergency room visits.” The same visit can check stitches, help with feeding, screen for depression and look the baby over while it’s there. Walton calls it dyadic care, mother and baby seen as a pair, and it’s routine across much of Europe, although it’s rare here.
The public already agrees, with 85% backing home visits in the first two weeks, and another 83% supporting a full year of postpartum health coverage, since the bills and the risks both outlast the six-week visit. Two concrete moves, both broadly popular, neither waiting on anything but the decision to make them. “Moms and dads aren’t asking for something new here,” Walton says. “They’re asking for care that shows up when the danger actually does.”
Most of the country already agrees
Broad agreement is rare in American politics, and this poll turned up a lot of it. Across the 15 policies the campaign tested, more than 80% of voters backed nearly every one, whether the respondent was Republican or Democrat, rural or urban, 25 or 65, a parent or not.
Walton, who has spent years in rooms with parents, doctors and legislators from both parties, was sure the common ground was there. The poll is the first time she’s been able to put a number on it. “It wasn’t any single policy. It was the consistency.” Support even climbed once people heard the basics, rising from 77% to 86% after respondents were read a short set of facts, and moving fastest among Democrats, from 65% to 78%.
This is the opening, Walton says. And at least one state is showing the fixes aren’t theoretical. In Arkansas, Medicaid pays for doulas and a nurse-staffed call center that pulls moms into prenatal care sooner, and by Walton’s account it’s one of only six states where the CDC has found prenatal access improving since 2021. The model exists, Walton says. Now it’s a question of who copies it.
Care that comes to the mother
The policy with the most support, at 88%, was expanding telehealth and specialty care for rural and high-risk pregnancies, and the need is easy to see. By Walton’s count, 139 rural hospitals have stopped delivering babies since 2020, and only 41% of rural hospitals still offer labor and delivery at all. Her home state of Arkansas had another unit announce its closure the week she answered these questions.
For a mom in one of those areas where hospitals are closing, telehealth is the difference between a 90-minute drive for a checkup and being seen from her kitchen table. A high-risk patient can have a maternal-fetal medicine specialist check in without leaving home, so warning signs are spotted early.
In addition to a dearth of hospitals, there are also too few doctors available to deliver babies and check up on moms. Training more kinds of maternal health workers would help, and 86% agreed with the measure. Midwives can handle most low-risk pregnancies and free up specialists for the cases that need them. Doulas improve outcomes just by being in the room. Community health workers and home visitors are often the first to catch a warning sign, since they’re the ones at the kitchen table and not the exam room. “Care is a team, not a single gatekeeper,” Walton says.
What to do next
The poll’s most useful finding is a practical one: 8 in 10 voters said they’re more likely to vote for a candidate who makes maternal health a priority, which gives the issue real weight at the ballot box. A mother who asks her representative where they stand is speaking for most of the country.
So use it. Become part of HMHBA’s Momtourage, join a Chamber of Mothers chapter and call your representatives to ask where they stand, and whether they’ll move on home visits, a year of coverage and telehealth for rural moms. The deaths are largely preventable, the fixes are cheap and popular, and the model is already running in at least one state. What’s left is pressure, and mothers can turn up the dial better than anyone.
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