Hospitals and maternal mortality

Gov. Hochul again addressed maternal and infant mortality, this time from the halls of the State Capitol, on Tuesday as she laid out her broader plans for 2024 in her State of the State address.

Anyone wondering whom the plan is meant to appease need only look at the place where it was first unveiled a few days ago: a hospital.

As a former NICU nurse, I won’t dispute that parts of the governor’s six-point plan, such as paid prenatal leave and reducing the number of C-sections, are positive outcomes for families.

But, it can’t be ignored that there is a huge hole in the plan that would have been addressed by the Grieving Families Act; a reform to the state’s 1847 wrongful death law that holds wrongdoers accountable. Forty-eight states have enacted similar legislation, leaving New York with the dubious distinction of being the only state other than Alabama to continue to deny its citizens its benefits.

Despite being passed with overwhelming numbers by both house of the Legislature, the governor vetoed the act — for the second time — days before unveiling the six-point maternal and infant mortality plan, the third in a series of proposals that shape the agenda. Make no mistake, though: The Grieving Families Act will be resuscitated.

Much of the governor’s plan, like its proposed funding of portable cribs, subtly puts responsibility for these deaths on the backs of parents and not where it belongs: on hospitals. You can’t help but wonder how involved the Greater New York Hospital Association was in crafting this agenda, which includes many mere perfunctory items they have long supported.

Montefiore’s chief medical officer recently told The New York Times that higher rates of underlying risk factors, such as obesity and diabetes, contribute to maternal and infant mortality rates. Blaming women for their own failed care is not new.

A UN study recently refuted misconceptions that Black women’s lifestyle choices or genetics underlie their poorer childbirth experiences, pointing instead to racism.

We can’t continue to blame women, and especially Black women, for their own failed health care in an era of record spikes in deaths among pregnant women and infants.

Not when, for the first time in 20 years, infant mortality is rising across the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a national infant mortality rate of 5.60 deaths per 1,000 births in 2022. That was 3% higher than the 2021 rate of 5.44 infant deaths per 1,000 births. New York State’s rate of infant mortality rose over the same period, from 4.16 deaths per 1,000 births to 4.26.

For Black women, the odds are drastically worse. According to the NYC Department of Health, the New York City pregnancy-related mortality ratio (PRMR), driven by structural racism and discrimination, is on average 9.2 times higher for Black, compared with white, mothers,

How would the Grieving Families Act have helped reduce Black maternal and infant mortality? The reform would have allowed claims for grief and anguish in wrongful death cases instead of the current system of determining the value of life based solely on income.

Because the gender-based pay gap persists in New York, for reasons ranging from basic inequity to underlying disparities to the fact that a shortage in child care leads women, overwhelmingly, to sideline their career goals, women remain secondary income earners to men. And our wrongful death statute embraces that.

Hospitals fear a reform. Because of all the above disparities, they are essentially let off the hook in many maternal mortality cases, even those involving gross negligence, like that of ShaAsia Semple, killed by a doctor with a history of recklessness.

Scare tactics about rising insurance costs shouldn’t be trusted either. We need only look at other states, like Illinois, where costs did not rise after similar legislation became law, to know that this is just propaganda.

The current law deters killing the wealthy, because they have legal standing to sue. The Grieving Families Act would mean that these less well-to-do women and babies, and their families, also have protection.

The governor should make the Grieving Families Act a necessary component of this agenda. She also should meet with Christine Fields’ family, who requested a meeting in December after Fields died at Woodhull Hospital — just 10 minutes from the location of the press conference the governor would go on to hold.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie isn’t ready to give up; and neither are we. The Legislature will see this through, and the governor must stop bowing to the hospital association.

Forrest is an assemblymember representing the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill and a nurse.