From every mother counts a national call for birth justice and accountability, they say, quote,

racism, not race, is killing black, brown, and indigenous people in our maternity care system.

In what is now known as the United States, women are more likely to die from complications of pregnancy and birth than in 54 other high-resourced countries.

And most of these deaths are preventable.

So for the first time ever, a woman is twice as likely to die from pregnancy-related complications as her mother was a

generation ago. This burden is not equally shared. In the United States, it is urban native women

with the highest maternal mortality rate.

In Washington State, where the three of us live, Native women are dying at eight times the rate of white mamas, right?

Four times rate of black and Pacific Islander mamas. So we have by far the highest maternal mortality rate in Washington State. And for most,

they just want to survive. You know, actually just wanting to live through the experience is,

you know, is the goal, right? I mean, I remember when Lino and I were on the way to the hospital

to give birth to Alma, I was talking to him about if I die, you know,

like if I die today, I want you to stay in Swinamish. I don't want you to leave. You know, I want

you to stay here so my baby can be raised as an Indian. And he was like, what? And I was

totally. But I, I, because of the statistics, yep, I genuinely believed that I might, that that might be the day that I died.

I can really relate to that feeling of like, all right, yeah, okay, the nurse was a bitch.

And they did, I've got my stitches.

And they wouldn't give me drugs when I wanted them,

and there was a lot of things that went wrong, but at least I lived.

So I can actually relate to.

Yeah, and the baby lived.

And so, and because I have so many, I know so many women who didn't live through birth

...