Private and public organizations are working to save the lives of fetuses, infants and mothers alike in Mississippi—the deadliest state in the U.S. for babies before and after they are born. New or expecting mothers in Mississippi are also at higher risk of dying than in most other states.
“All of the things that increase our fetal mortality rate are the same things that increase maternal mortality and infant mortality. It’s a complicated problem,” said Dr. Anita Henderson, a pediatrician at the Pediatric Clinic in Hattiesburg, Miss., who previously served as the president of the Mississippi Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
In 2021, the Magnolia state had 355 fetal deaths at 20 weeks of pregnancy or more, which is a rate of 10 per 1,000 births, the CDC found in a report released on July 26, 2023. Infant deaths occur from birth to before a child’s first birthday, and Mississippi’s rate was the highest in the nation at 8.12 per 1,000 births. The state’s maternal mortality rate in 2021 was 36 per 100,000 births.
The data comes after Gov. Tate Reeves repeatedly vowed to make Mississippi “the safest state in America for an unborn child” with his successful crusade to ban abortion within its borders. After last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization shuttered the state’s only abortion clinic, State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney warned the Legislature that the state’s health care system was unprepared for the 5,000 additional births a year that would result.
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“When I became state health officer Aug. 1 of last year, I identified maternal (and infant mortality) as my number one priority,” Edney told the Mississippi Free Press on Aug. 3, 2023.
The Mississippi Department of Health has developed two systems to combat these statistics. First, it partnered with the Mississippi Division of Medicaid to create the Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies program, Edney said.
“Our signature service program is the Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies program, which provides case management intervention for high-risk Medicaid moms in pregnancy or for any high-risk infants that are born, (nurses) will
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