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Women need access to comprehensive health services—including abortion care, contraceptives, and maternal health care—in order to thrive as breadwinners, caregivers, and employees. To ensure women are able to access high-quality care, states should, at minimum, implement measures to reduce racial and other disparities in pregnancy-related morbidity and mortality; protect and improve their Medicaid programs; strengthen family planning programs and expand contraceptive access; and end onerous restrictions that reduce access to abortion care and undermine the patient-provider relationship.

At the state level, West Virginia should ensure that women have access to the full spectrum of quality, affordable, and women-centered reproductive health services.

Maternal health: Certain communities experience higher maternal and infant mortality and morbidity; namely, Black and Indigenous people are, nationally, about three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications. Additionally, in rural areas—where approximately 38 percent of West Virginians reside14—pregnant people face further challenges when seeking care due to increasing rural hospital closures and obstetric providers shortages.15 Indeed, the impact of these disparities are borne out in West Virginia’s pregnancy-related mortality rate:16 4 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2017, well above the national rate of 17.3 deaths per 100,000 live births that same year.17 The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed both deep racial inequities in health and health care18 and the fragility of rural health care infrastructure, both of which have the potential to directly and adversely affect the health of pregnant people in West Virginia if swift, decisive action is not taken to improve access to and outcomes of care.

Table of Poor people health

Table of contents

Volume 1