This week in the last stretch of state budget negotiations, a proposed 50% cut to the Birth Equity Initiative and a $4M cut to Infant Mortality were released. We understand the fiscal pressures the state is facing with an unprecedented budget shortfall due to federal cuts, however leaving our mothers and newborns to face the brunt of those cuts is something that we as a state cannot accept.
Maternal and infant deaths are not inevitable. In most recent data, 91% of all pregnancy-related deaths were potentially preventable. But maternal mortality is far too high in Illinois and falls hardest on Black women, who are twice as likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause as white women.
Illinois as a state has been making remarkable efforts to decrease maternal and infant mortality by being the first state in the country to expand Medicaid to 12 months postpartum, passing the Birth Equity Initiative and related legislation in 2024, and publishing the Birth Equity Blueprint in 2025 to map out investments in healthcare quality and provider support, establishing universal risk assessment, referral, and care coordination, and ensuring that all Illinoisans receive respectful and supportive birth care.
However, federal cuts to Medicaid and SNAP through HR1 will cause hundreds of thousands of people of reproductive age in Illinois to lose their benefits and increase their risk for chronic conditions that put women, and disproportionately Black and Brown women, at risk for negative birth outcomes.
The State’s Birth Equity Initiative seeks to increase trust between providers and patients and ensure that birthing Illinoisans receive the prenatal and postpartum care that they are entitled to. At a time where many will not have pre-existing provider relationship due to lack of insurance access, these efforts are crucial to getting mothers the information and connection with needed services that could mean the difference between life and death for postpartum parents and newborns.
The Birth Equity Initiative and Infant Mortality programing is situated to help the state mitigate some of the worst effects of HR1, but only if it is adequately funded. The General Assembly must act so that we continue to progress towards a state where everyone can have a safe pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experience, and our children are safe and healthy.