America is in a maternal health crisis. According to new CDC data released this week, the rate of maternal mortality – defined as deaths during pregnancy or within 42 days of giving birth – rose by 40% in 2021. At a rate of 33 deaths for every 100,000 live births, 1,205 women died of maternal causes that year. That rate was more than twice as high for Black women, whose maternal mortality rate was 70 deaths for every 100,000 live births. The latest federal compilation of data from reviews of maternal deaths suggests that 84% were preventable.

Experts believe that 2021’s spike in maternal mortality can be attributed at least partly to the Covid-19 pandemic, though it’s not clear exactly how. Perhaps infection and exposure to the virus made pregnant women more vulnerable; perhaps the pandemic caused some women to delay or forgo prenatal care as hospitals strained to treat the surge of virus patients and shutdowns made all kinds of care harder and riskier to get.

But even before Covid-19, America has long been an outlier in maternal deaths, with […]