As the rates of maternal mortality remain staggeringly high in New York City, especially among Black and Latino women, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams recently convened a group of advocates and city leaders to move the needle on this crisis.
“It’s so critical to keep it top of mind for everyone,” said Adams.
Bevorlin Garcia Barrios, 24, was an example of this crisis: She was the third woman of color to die at Woodhull Hospital in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, since 2020. Despite alerting medical staff about experiencing pain and symptoms, she was sent home. She returned days later and was finally admitted when her symptoms worsened. However, her case wasn’t initially treated as an emergency. She later died after having an emergency C-section.
In general, between 50 and 60 women and birthing people lose their lives during pregnancy or within a year from the end of pregnancy. Black New Yorkers are six times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes compared to white New Yorkers, according to city data. Black and Hispanic women are also more likely to have a cesarean delivery (C-section) than white women, even when considered “low-risk.”
Shortly after Barrios’s death, Adams gave a fiery speech about the persistence of maternal mortality, calling for the city to do more to combat the issue. “We are failing women during one of the most vulnerable periods of their lives,” she said. “As a society, we accept maternal mortality as an unfortunate casualty when, in fact, a majority of deaths could have been prevented with appropriate care and attention. These deaths are not accidents. They are a disturbing pattern of injustice.”
Adams spoke about her own mother’s fraught experience when pregnant with her. Her mother had several false alarms, said Adams, so the nurses dismissed her symptoms. She eventually gave birth to Adams “alone, on a gurney, in [a] corner of Elmhurst General Hospital.”
In an interview with the Amsterdam News, Adams said that story resonates even more with her now that she is a mother and grandmother herself. She has one biological daughter, from her first marriage to her late husband, whom she delivered naturally, and has raised three stepchildren. “I experienced gestational diabetes during my pregnancy. I had a very stressful pregnancy, actually, because I got married very young … It was a very stressful time,” she said. “I lived to be sure that she had life. I carried very, very small. I had no appetite. My doctor had threatened to put me on IV fluids … but she was born at a normal weight because that’s how great God is.”
It should be noted that the city and state have made some progress on the maternal mortality front. Previous city health department data indicates that from 2011 to 2015, the mortality rate and racial disparity was slightly higher: Black women were eight times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than white women back then.
In 2022, Brooklyn Borough President (BP) Antonio Reynoso launched a multilingual maternal health campaign, started a task force, and allocated his entire $45 million for the capital budget toward state-of-the-art birthing centers in Brooklyn’s safety net hospitals. Mayor Eric Adams implemented a citywide expansion of doula and midwifery programs. The same year, Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who is also Brooklyn’s Democratic Party boss, began pushing at the state level for more maternal health legislation due to her own pregnancy complications. Last year, Governor Kathy Hochul launched the first statewide paid prenatal leave policy, which gives workers the ability to take time off from work for any pregnancy-related medical appointments.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the most common and direct causes of maternal injury and death are excessive blood loss, infection, high blood pressure, unsafe abortion, and obstructed labor. Women are particularly exposed to these during and after C-sections, which run the inherent risks of surgery, maternal morbidity and mortality, and adverse neonatal outcomes. Indirect or underlying causes include anemia, malaria, and heart disease. However, most maternal deaths are preventable with “timely management by a skilled health professional working in a supportive environment,” said WHO.
Yet with all the awareness and initiatives, Black women are still dying during and after childbirth in 2025.
“We have to be honest about it: It’s racism,” said Speaker Adams. “This crisis is preventable and we can’t accept it as inevitable. We have to act with greater urgency through coordinated action.” She said the committee could discuss and explore other contributing factors to Black maternal mortality that stem from systemic bias, such as unnecessary or emergency C-sections, which are all the more egregious considering that the procedure was “perfected” by experimenting on enslaved Black women’s bodies without anesthesia in the late 1800s. She added that the procedure is costly and takes much longer to recover from.
This past Thursday, Feb. 6, Speaker Adams held the first convening of the Council Maternal Health Steering Committee at City Hall in an effort to get all of the city’s leaders and maternal health advocates in the same room and on the same page.
In addition to herself, members include Gov. Kathy Hochul, Deputy Speaker Diana Ayala, Department of Health & Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) Interim Commissioner Dr. Michelle Morse, NYC Health & Hospitals (H+H) President and CEO Dr. Mitchell Katz, Greater New York Hospitals Association (GNYHA) Senior Vice President Dr. Erin Dupree, New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) Vice President Dr. Judith Cutchin, Bronx Health Link Clinical Director Anastasia Libovich, Caribbean Women’s Health Association Executive Director Cheryl Hall, New York Midwives President Helena Grant, New York Midwives Patricia Loftman, Spirit of a Woman Co-Founder & CEO Shawnee Benton Gibson, and saveArose Foundation Co-Founder Bruce McIntyre.
“We can no longer normalize the maternal health disparities seen throughout our city,” said Ayala in a statement. “Addressing inequities requires more than just medical interventions — we must tackle entrenched biases [and] improve culturally competent care and address social factors that undermine maternal health, like mental health, nutrition, opportunity, and access to housing. With the voices of experts and those most affected guiding our work, we will pursue holistic solutions so that every mother, regardless of race, income, or ZIP code, can get the care that they deserve to keep them safe and healthy.”
McIntyre’s partner, Amber Rose Isaac, 26, died in 2020 giving birth to their son at Bronx’s Montefiore Hospital while in quarantine. The hospital decided to induce labor early and do an emergency C-section without a blood transfusion, which resulted in severe blood loss. Since Isaac’s death, McIntyre has been an outspoken advocate for the Grieving Families Act, which the governor has not passed yet, and opened the Maryam Reproductive Health and Wellness clinic in the Bronx in October 2024.
In the maternal health committee meeting, which was closed to the press, McIntyre spoke about the importance of freestanding birthing centers and Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) to create more holistic environments for women and pregnant people. “I also spoke a lot about truth and reconciliation from the hospitals, because we see far too often where the hospitals are making these mistakes and instead of taking accountability, they try to hide and cover up as much as they can,” McIntyre said. “It helps the institution point the finger at the patient versus their actual ethics and codes.”
Gibson, who lost her daughter, Shamony Makeba Gibson, from a birth-related complication, said in a statement, “We must move beyond conversation into collective action — with accountability — so that our efforts are not fragmented but fortified. Breaking down silos is essential to this work and real change requires us to embody the indigenous centered practice of Ubuntu, ‘I Am Because WE Are.’ If we are truly committed to addressing the maternal health crisis in NYC, we must share knowledge, pool resources, and leverage our individual and collective power to transform policies, institutions, and healthcare systems. This is not just about reform — it is about liberation, restoration, and the birth of a future where equitable reproductive and postpartum care is a fundamental human right for all, not a privilege for a few.”