This is in conversation from Apple News.

I'm Shemitabasu. Today, why America's maternal health care is failing families.

A few years ago, journalist Irian Carmon was at a picnic for her child's preschool in New York City, watching her children and chatting with the other moms when the conversation turned to her latest project, a book that she had just started researching.

Somebody asked me what my book was about.

I said, it's about how America treats you when you're pregnant.

And somebody said, like a child.

And somebody else said, like an animal.

And Maggie said, like a child animal.

And I sort of looked at everyone wondering what their stories were.

One of the moms, Maggie, ended up becoming one of the main stories told in Irene's new book.

It's called Unbearable, Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America.

And it follows several families through their encounters with the health care system,

navigating fertility challenges, pregnancy, loss, and birth.

Each story is unique, but Irene says there is a common thread running through all of them.

America, whether it was through our uncaring, profit-driven medical system, or through a system of laws that were suddenly unleashed in full force when the Supreme Court

overturned Rovey Wade has failed to see us as fully people, as fully human, who are in possession

of our full faculties, and instead as a means to an end or a vessel.

That failure, Erian says, is not just something people feel.

It's reflected in the data.

Regardless of how you measure it, if you crunch the numbers in the most conservative way,

this is the most dangerous country to be pregnant among our pure notions.

And according to the CDC, 80% of

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