The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate in the industrialized world, and most of the deaths are completely preventable. On top of that, Black women die at up to four times the rate of white women due to racism in the healthcare industry.

Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris introduced a pair of bills aimed at preventing negligence in hospitals that results in deaths and medical complications, and fixing the tragic racial disparity in how many women die before, during, and after childbirth. The bills, called Modernizing Obstetric Medicine Standards (MOMS) and Maternal Care Access and Reducing Emergencies (CARE), are meant to complement each other.

"Hospitals have struggled under a lack of funding for a long time and the MOMS Act helps them because it would provide funding and get the data so we can understand the depth of the problem," Sen. Gillibrand told Refinery29 in an interview.

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