Bills to address racial disparities in maternal health care are making a comeback in the Michigan Legislature.
The Senate bills would increase data reporting, include pregnant people in protections outlined in state civil rights law, and expand Medicaid coverage for pregnancy-related care.
Similar bills were reintroduced last legislative session. Those bills passed the Michigan Senate but got caught up in other politics during the last weeks of the year.
Senator Sarah Anthony (D-Lansing) said she and other package sponsors are hitting the ground running this time.
“An early start provides us an opportunity to not only continuing to collect stories from people across the state who would benefit from these bills, but it also gives us an opportunity to have really strategic conversations with both sides of the aisle,” Anthony said Friday.
State health department numbers show Black women die from pregnancy-related causes more than twice as often as white women.
The first time around, some of the bills in the package received at least a few Republican votes in the Senate.
Unlike then, Republicans now control the Michigan House. That means the package would need bipartisan buy-in to come to a vote, let alone pass the Legislature, should the bills make it out of the Senate.
Anthony said she’s feeling undeterred, saying people expect lawmakers to work on their behalf.
“Part of that is for us to sit down and find common ground on things that are not partisan and quite honestly are not wedge issues, and making sure that women have the resources they need as they are planning their family is something that I think we can find some common ground on,” Anthony said.
