‘Birthing while Black’ is a national crisis for the US. Here’s what Black lawmakers want to do about it

For Black women in Congress, maternal mortality hits close to home. The Black Maternal Health Caucus seeks change

When Alma Adams's daughter complained of abdominal pain during a difficult pregnancy, her doctor overlooked her cries for help. The North Carolina congresswoman's daughter had to undergo a last-minute caesarean section. She and her baby daughter, now 16, survived.

It could have gone another way. I could have been a mother who was grieving her daughter and granddaughter," Adams told the Guardian, following a week in which the White House highlighted the crisis of pregnancy-related deaths among Black women. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Black women die at three times the rate of white women.