Year after year, government data have shown that the maternal mortality rate in the United States remains unacceptably high, with Black and American Indian or Alaska Native pregnant and postpartum people disproportionately experiencing health inequities. The vast majority—roughly 80%—of maternal deaths are considered preventable, and nearly half of maternal deaths occur between seven and 365 days postpartum, not during delivery itself. But all of the resounding data about maternal deaths cannot capture the true scope and scale of those losses: the anguish felt by families who lose loved ones, the trauma endured by those with severe maternal complications, the tragedy of those unable to access needed abortion care, the emotional and financial cost of those recovering from severe maternal morbidity, the communities that are living with increasingly depleted health care resources, and the clinicians whose ethical obligations to their patients are compromised daily.
Today, with patients in many states having lost their reproductive freedoms and care deserts expanding and touching more communities, it’s more critical now than ever that we stay committed to efforts to improve maternal health outcomes.
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For Maternal Health Awareness Day 2025, ACOG has selected the theme Know What’s at Stake. We invite our ACOG members, partners, and other members of our community to join us in raising awareness about what’s at stake for them as the maternal mortality crisis continues and as attacks on reproductive health care go on unabated. By knowing what’s at stake, collectively we are reminded that we can’t afford to lose any more ground.
Abortion Bans Prevent Clinicians from Providing Care
In the more than two years since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, pregnant people across the country have suffered as their access to care was stripped away. Patients have been forced to travel hundreds of miles to get care, afraid that they may not survive the trip. Doctors have been forced to watch their patients get sicker and sicker before they could intervene. Pregnant people have been forced to experience severe and sometimes irreversible health consequences from being denied essential health care. All the while, anti-abortion advocates have misrepresented and exploited real people’s tragedies to advance their own agenda.
Despite misinformation and confusion spread by politicians and anti-abortion advocates, the truth is clear: abortion bans prevent doctors and clinicians from providing essential reproductive health care to their patients. Reproductive health care being delayed, denied, or made inaccessible is the direct result of harmful abortion bans that confuse and harm clinicians and the patients they treat.
