The Advocate. August 6, 2023.
Editorial: Louisiana’s shameful infant mortality rate is a human tragedy, not a statistic.
Politicians, policymakers and parents often lament the dispiriting exodus of young people who leave Louisiana seeking better prospects for themselves and their future children. But who weeps for the nearly 200 Louisiana children every year who never get the chance to make that choice — the babies whose early deaths place our state among the worst places in the world to be born preterm or with a low birth weight?
Louisiana has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. That is a mind-numbing statistic, yet all too often it fades into an abyss amid other disheartening facts about our state.
It’s painful to contemplate such statistics. But that’s nothing compared to the pain that a mother and father feel when their preterm, low-birthweight child dies within days of coming into the world unexpectedly.
To grieving parents, their lost child is not a statistic. They recognize their baby’s face and distinctive cry for help. Above all, they know their child’s name.
Madison Harper Davis is one such child.
Madison weighed 1 pound, 2 ounces when she was born more than three months preterm, too fragile for her parents — Amber and Jonathan Davis — to hold her. Instead, they prayed over her, read to her and watched as she kicked her feet inside a hospital incubator.
On her 19th day, Madison died.
Madison’s brief life reflects a much larger, unrelenting crisis across our state: babies being born too early, too tiny, or from complications their mothers experienced during pregnancy.
And then dying.
Dying in numbers that should shame every Louisianian, because most of those deaths are preventable.
According to analysis by The Times-Picayune ' The Advocate of data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Louisiana’s infants were 65% more likely to die from preterm birth and low birth weight than babies in the rest of the country during the decade before the COVID pandemic.
That and other appalling statistics inspired “For Dear Life: Louisiana’s Infant Mortality Crisis,” a special series beginning today and continuing to December. Today’s installment, by staff writer Andrea Gallo and data editor Jeff Adelson, examines the causes and painful effects of Louisiana’s “maternity care deserts” and other factors relating to our state’s deplorable record of high infant and maternal mortality.
Yes, mothers across Louisiana are dying at an alarming rate as well, especially those who are poor, Black or live in rural areas where access to pregnancy care is limited or even nonexistent.
If Louisiana is to confront its shameful place near the top of the world’s worst places to be born — or pregnant — we must heed the admonition of former state Health Secretary Dr. Rebekah Gee, who specializes in obstetrics and gynecology. “We need to have an attitude that this is shocking and inhumane and unacceptable,” Gee said.
We agree. But we need more than an attitude to overcome this crisis. We must demand that our leaders do more to change things — because most of our state’s infant and maternal deaths are preventable, according to experts.
We also need to see this crisis not in terms of overwhelming, demoralizing statistics, but rather in terms of individual children who deserve a chance to survive. We need to remember the name Madison Harper Davis, because this crisis is one of human suffering and loss that makes our hearts ache.
We cannot dry the tears of Madison’s parents, but collectively, we can and must resolve to change the odds for all the other tiny Madisons yet to face the struggle she lost because we failed to act sooner. If Madison could speak to us, we believe that is what she would ask of us.
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