(KFF Health News) – In much of the developed world, dying while pregnant or delivering a child is practically unknown. In Australia, for example, there were just 3 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births in 2021. But that’s not the case in the American South. And especially not for Black women.

In South Carolina, Black women were more than four times as likely to die of a pregnancy-related cause in 2020 than White women. And discrimination was a factor in more than a third of the state’s 18 pregnancy-related deaths of women of all races, according to a recently published legislative report by the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control. (Read More)