Bill To Improve Birth Outcomes For Women Of Color

A new law seeks to change that. Senate Bill (SB) 65 requires counties to thoroughly report the effects and causes of infant and maternal mortality in California. It will provide midwives with the proper resources to train a diverse range of new hires and expand Medi-Cal coverage for doula services. 

State Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) authored the bill. She said that although California faces lower maternal and infant mortality rates compared to other states, there is an urgency to combatting the increasing rates of pregnancy-related deaths.

“We initiated some policies over the last five to ten years to try to address it and our outcomes were better than other states,” Skinner said. “However, even California started falling behind and across the whole country we started to see that infant mortality and maternal mortality and bad health complications were increasing.”

Skinner also noted that there were a variety of organizations that helped formulate the law. 

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