by Elisha Brown, Georgia Recorder
May 10, 2025

For two congresswomen sponsoring a package of bills seeking to improve maternal health in the United States, their motivation is personal.

After first unveiling the initiatives five years ago, U.S. Reps. Alma Adams of North Carolina and Lauren Underwood of Illinois plan to reintroduce the measures with bipartisan support in May.

Adams and Underwood, the Momnibus Act’s Democratic House sponsors, say relatives or friends have died after childbirth or had severe complications during pregnancy.

“I got involved because my daughter almost became a victim of our maternal health crisis,” Adams told States Newsroom. Nineteen years ago, her daughter experienced a high-risk pregnancy, but Adams said doctors dismissed her complaints of abdominal pain during labor.

Some providers do not listen to women’s concerns, she said, particularly women of color. About 30% of Black, Hispanic and multiracial mothers said they were mistreated during maternity care, and roughly 40% reported discrimination, according to a report released in 2023 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Underwood, who is also a registered nurse, said her dedication to improving maternal health equity stems from the death of her friend Dr. Shalon Irving, a CDC epidemiologist.

“In 2017, my friend Dr. Shalon Irving died just 3 weeks after giving birth to her daughter, Soleil. Dr. Shalon’s life and story have inspired my work in Congress to address our nation’s Black maternal health crisis,” Underwood wrote on social media in 2021, when she reintroduced an expanded version of the Momnibus. 

Adams and Underwood co-founded the Black Maternal Health Caucus in 2019 and unveiled the first iteration of the act in early March 2020 with former Democratic California Sen. Kamala Harris shortly before the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated maternal mortality rates.

The slate of bills aims to increase funding to study maternal health disparities, extend eligibility for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, diversify the perinatal workforce and invest in prenatal care for incarcerated mothers, among other provisions.

Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker carries the Momnibus in the upper chamber.

When the package was reintroduced in 2021, Congress passed just one part of it — the Protecting Moms Who Served Act. The law required the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to create a $15 million maternity care coordination program. No individual bills passed in the next congressional session, but lawmakers have funded over $200 million in maternal health research and equity programs through appropriations bills in fiscal years 2023 and 2024. 

Underwood said she, Adams and Booker plan to bring back the 14-bill Momnibus package during the congressional session this month.

“There’s a real sense of urgency in this work, and we’re excited to work with colleagues in both chambers, Democrats and Republicans, to come together to save mom’s lives,” Underwood said. 

Republican Party leaders champion the GOP as pro-family, though their Democratic colleagues might argue many of their policies are anything but. Whether the Momnibus can garner enough bipartisan support for passage and signature remains to be seen.

Several individual measures in the Momnibus have Republican sponsors, including Alabama Sen. Katie Britt and Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick. States Newsroom reached out to Britt and Fitzpatrick’s representatives for interviews. Britt was not available, and Fitzpatrick’s staff did not respond to multiple requests.

Last year, Britt and Fitzpatrick sponsored the National Institutes of Health IMPROVE Act with Underwood and former Sen. Laphonza Butler, a California Democrat. The measure didn’t make it to committee, but it would have given $53.4 million to the NIH yearly through 2031 for research on how to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity.

Britt was able to secure more than $73 million for the initiative in the latest appropriations bill. 

“Alabama has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the nation. This disproportionately affects Black women,” she said in an August press release. “In 2024, it should not be like this.”

Britt’s emphasis on racial maternal health disparities and commitment to public health funding contrasts with rhetoric from other national Republicans that seeks to eradicate discussions of systemic racism and opposes policies meant to remedy deep-rooted discrimination.

The push for funding maternal health research comes as a Republican-controlled Congress is facing pressure from President Donald Trump to slash funding at historic levels. The administration has already moved to gut national reproductive health research units, including the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System staff and the Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance Team.

Dr. Natalie Hernandez, the executive director of the Morehouse School of Medicine’s Center for Maternal Health Equity, said her institution, an historically Black college and university, lost a federal grant focused on addressing maternal behavioral health, including mental health conditions, substance use disorders and intimate partner violence.

“What we’re trying to do is re-strategize and figure out how to continue a lot of the efforts that we’ve made,” Hernandez said. She emphasized that maternal health research has led lawmakers to enact effective policies, like postpartum Medicaid expansion. 

“We’re at a time when we need to be moving forward and investing more and expanding more access and services to mothers and families,” said Jesseca Boyer, vice president of policy and strategic initiatives at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a nonpartisan nonprofit. “We’re seeing this administration moving backwards.”

Boyer said the Momnibus is a critical piece of legislation to address the maternal health crisis in the U.S. Black mothers continue to die from pregnancy-related causes at higher rates than other demographics, though nationwide maternal mortality numbers have decreased from pandemic highs — the pregnancy-related death rate was 18.6 per 100,000 live births in 2023, down from 22.3 in 2022, per the latest federal data. The maternal mortality rate for Black women was 50.3 in 2023, compared with 14.5 for white women, 12.4 for Hispanic women and 10.7 for Asian women. Data for Native American mothers was not provided. 

Passage of the NIH Improve Act could show congressional support for maternal health research and investigating the root causes of maternal mortality, Boyer said.

Patrick T. Brown is a Life and Family Initiative fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative nonprofit advocacy organization. The center published a report about abortion medication last week that anti-abortion opponents told Politico they hope will spur the Trump administration to restrict access to the drugs. 

Brown has written extensively about how conservatives can improve outcomes for parents and children. While he hasn’t read the minutiae of the Momnibus, supporting mothers by investing in doula care, breastfeeding support and the like is “common sense,” he said.

Brown also endorsed the idea of a “baby bonus,” one-time federal payments of $4,000 for married parents or $2,000 for single parents of newborns. The New York Times reported that some lawmakers have floated this idea, and Trump endorsed the notion in 2023 at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“Oftentimes around childbirth, needs go up and income goes down. If we want to stabilize new parents, and we know that having resources is linked to better outcomes for mom and baby just because you can afford not to have to go back to work and all the rest, this is a way of recognizing that without having to build a huge paid leave entitlement or something that really gets Republicans up in arms,” Brown said.

He emphasized he does not believe a lump sum payment is a one-size-fits-all solution to helping parents raise children, and he suspected that some Republicans would deride the idea as welfare. “They’ve been thinking this way since 1980, and nothing I say is going to change their minds,” Brown said.

Adams, Boyer, Brown and Underwood all agree that there should be some consensus in Congress on how to improve maternal health.

“Legislative success is not always linear, and it’s not always quick, but we’re not deterred or discouraged,” Underwood said. “We are focused, and it’s clear that these resources are desperately needed in all ZIP codes across the country.” 

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.

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Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This content focuses on Democratic lawmakers’ efforts to address maternal health disparities in the U.S., highlighting the Momnibus Act championed by prominent Democrats. It presents maternal health equity as a critical social issue and emphasizes systemic problems such as racial discrimination in healthcare. The article also acknowledges bipartisan support but frames Republican efforts more cautiously, mentioning tensions over public health funding and contrasting GOP rhetoric on systemic racism. The tone is supportive of government intervention and social equity, aligning broadly with center-left perspectives while maintaining some balance by noting Republican contributions and viewpoints.