During the first day of hearings on Sept. 27, 2022, senators reviewed the abysmal statistics for children born in Mississippi and their parents. Mississippi has the highest infant mortality rate, which measures how many infants die in Mississippi before their first birthday. New CDC data released on the day of the first hearing showed that, in 2020, 8.12 out of 1,000 babies in Mississippi died before their first birthday, compared to the national average of 5.4.
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From 2013 to 2016, Mississippi’s pregnancy-related maternal mortality rate was 1.9 times higher than the U.S. as a whole, with Black women at three times the risk of white women.
More than half of Mississippi’s 82 counties do not have an OB-GYN, and many do not have hospitals. Less than a month before the Dobbs decision, a Hancock County hospital closed its labor and delivery department.
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