‘This is how they cover up our deaths’: Georgia dismissed its entire Maternal Mortality Committee following two preventable deaths
While we’re still reeling from the news of President-elect Donald Trump’s increasingly concerning Cabinet appointments and the proposal of Nancy Mace’s anti-trans bathroom bill on Capitol Hill, the state of Georgia has now dismissed the entirety of its Maternal Mortality Review Committee (MMRC) in the wake of two preventable deaths under state abortion restrictions.
The tragic deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller made headlines when investigative journalists at ProPublica reported in September that Georgia’s state committee had determined they were preventable. In response, the commissioner of the State Department of Public Health, Dr. Kathleen Toomey, confirmed in a November 8 letter the state has disbanded the current MMRC, as “confidential information provided to the Maternal Mortality Review Committee was inappropriately shared with outside individual(s).”
The state plans to fill all member seats through a new application process and evaluate current onboarding procedures to better ensure confidentiality, committee oversight, and the MMRC’s organizational structure. However, the news has raised several red flags despite the Department’s promise to improve.
Restructuring the MMRC points to potentially dangerous unknowns
The decision from Georgia’s State Department of Public Health to restructure the MMRC may sound well-intentioned, but a total overhaul of current members is concerning, to say the least. Every state has its own committee to look into maternal deaths that occur during pregnancy through labor and delivery and up to a year postpartum to determine whether they could have been prevented and identify any systemic issues that may have played a role. The goal in documenting these findings is to prevent similar deaths by working to find solutions to their causes—a task that will likely be placed on the back burner while the committee is restructured.
As it stands, the U.S. boasts the highest maternal mortality rate of any high-income nation, with the greatest threat posed to Black women, who face a rate of just under 50 deaths per 100,000 live births. Given the state of Georgia’s Black population exceeds 30 percent, with Atlanta being the second largest majority Black metro area in the country, review setbacks could cause disproportionate harm to Black mothers in the state and allow mortality rates to rise across the board.
Although Dr. Toomey’s letter promises changes to the current committee “will not result in a delay in the MMRC’s responsibilities,” ProPublica has once again published receipts that suggest otherwise, noting that the state of Idaho’s committee has fallen behind by roughly a year as a result of its own restructuring.
Pro-choice advocates and women across the country fear we may see a similar delay in Georgia, but it’s also likely that anti-abortion activists will be seated on the committee upon its return, seeding further doubt and concern in the wake of the preventable deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller.
Transparency is more important now than ever
While confidentiality is important in health care, so is transparency. ProPublica reported that the families of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller believe they should have been informed that their deaths had been found preventable. However, this information was not shared with the families by Georgia’s MMRC.
Following the dismissal of the state’s current committee, author Jessica Valenti, who specializes in writing about abortion, boldly stated on X, “This is how they cover up our deaths.”
While a Georgia judge recently lifted the state’s previous six-week abortion ban, Valenti’s concern is a terrifying reality that’s bound to continue should a team united in combatting abortion access be seated on the state committee, as it was determined the state’s abortion restrictions played a role in the deaths of both Thurman and Miller. Abortion has become highly politicized since the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, and without transparent reporting on maternal mortality rates, the lives of women will continue to be put at risk in the aftermath.
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