ESSENCE Exclusive: Maya Harris to Host Black Maternal Health Roundtable in Michigan, Focusing on National Crisis – Essence

Maya Harris, the younger sister of Vice President Kamala Harris, is moving into the highlight to address an urgent issue that resonates deeply with many Black women across the country: maternal health. On Monday, Sept. 23, she’s going to lead a very important discussion in Flint, Michigan, a subject that has been in the highlight this election season, because the Harris-Walz campaign emphasized.

Amid growing threats to reproductive rights in America, the campaign says its goal is to protect a girl’s right to select while also combating the broader health care disparities that Black women face, particularly in maternal health care.

During this key roundtable, veteran attorney and senior policy advisor Maja Harris shall be joined by a gaggle of national and native Black leaders, including Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL), U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-CA), Michigan Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist II, Paula Thornton Greear of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Danielle Atkinson, founding father of the advocacy organization Mothering Justice, according to the Harris-Walz Campaign.

Together, these leaders will delve into critical issues affecting Black maternal health, shedding light on the potential challenges posed by Project 2025. This discussion is a component of Harris-Walz’s ongoing “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus tour, which kicked off in early September. The tour highlights the urgent need for motion and awareness in this vital area of ​​health care.

“From her days as a prosecutor to her time as vice president, my sister, Kamala Harris, has had only one client: the people,” Maya shared in an exclusive statement to ESSENCE. “As vice president, she made the Black maternal health crisis a priority and addressed this disparity. While Donald Trump travels the country bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade, which exacerbated this crisis, Kamala will continue to forge a new path forward, which includes signing the Roe Reinstatement Act into law once Congress passes it,” she said.

As ESSENCE previously reported, in the course of the September 10 presidential debate, Vice President Harris delivered a forceful response to Donald Trump’s defense of abortion policies. Harris stated, “The government and Donald Trump certainly shouldn’t be telling a woman what to do with her body.”

She described the difficult decisions women face, including medical complications and having to travel out of state to get an abortion. Trump, who appointed three Supreme Court justices answerable for overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, has tried to portray his position as more moderate, criticizing extreme abortion bans and expressing support for exceptions in cases of rape, incest or when the lifetime of the mother is in danger.

But he made no apologies for rolling back federal abortion protections, stating, “I did a great service by doing that. It took courage.” Trump also repeated a lot of his familiar talking points, falsely claiming there may be broad support for restoring abortion rights to the states and falsely accusing Democrats of favoring late-term abortions, including falsely claiming that some states allow abortions even after the infant is born. Moderator Linsey Davis immediately fact-checked the problem, explaining, “There is not a state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after birth.”

The timing of this conversation about Black maternal health couldn’t be more crucial. Just last week, news broke about Amber Thurman, a 28-yr-old Georgia mother who died in 2022 after being denied a obligatory medical procedure following complications attributable to the state’s restrictive abortion laws. ProPublica He said it was the primary case of an abortion-related death that had been publicly disclosed by an official state commission deemed “avoidable.”

Her death highlights the intense consequences of those policies, especially for black women who’re overrepresented thrice more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women in the United States.

To speed up change, on September 18, the Global Coalition for Transnational Solidarity and Action to Close the Maternal Health Care Gap for Women and Girls of African Descent was officially launched. United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in New York.

The initiative, supported by several countries, including the United States, goals to address the health of black women, already undermined by systemic racism in the health care system and further threatened as abortion rights are rolled back. The maternal health crisis is not any longer a distant political debate—it’s a matter of life or death for black moms and their families.

For the Harris-Walz campaign, Flint, Michigan, is a key stop on the Harris-Walz bus tour, which began Sept. 3 in Palm Beach, Florida, which recently passed a near-total abortion ban. The tour, which incorporates greater than 50 stops in key states including Michigan, goals to galvanize and mobilize supporters by reminding them what’s at stake if reproductive freedoms are usually not restored.