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Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act of 2024

Floor Speech

Date: May 14, 2024
Location: Washington, DC


Mr. Speaker, the United States continues to face a devastating crisis in maternal health, and this includes an ongoing crisis of stillbirths. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are approximately 21,000 stillbirth infants born every year in the United States. That is about 58 stillbirths every day. According to the March of Dimes, the annual number of stillbirths far exceeds the number of deaths among children from preterm birth, SIDS, accidents, drownings, fire, and flu combined.

Women who experience a stillbirth are also more likely to experience complications or even death after the delivery. According to the March of Dimes, severe morbidity is nearly five times more common than in women who experience a healthy pregnancy and delivery. These women are also justifiably more likely to suffer from depression.

H.R. 4581, the Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act, is bipartisan legislation which clarifies that States can use title V funding for evidence-based programs, activities, and outcome research to reduce the incidence of stillbirth. These activities could include community-based programs that provide home visits or other types of support and research or evidence-based programming to prevent stillbirths. This bill is supported by more than 30 women's health and research organizations across our healthcare spectrum.

This bill will provide better certainty for States to enhance the safety of women throughout their pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum experiences. The hope is that States would focus their efforts on communities with large health disparities in birth outcomes.

I thank Representative Adams for her leadership on this legislation.
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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, this is a very important bill for mothers' safety to prevent stillborn infants. I urge all my colleagues to support this on a bipartisan basis, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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