NC Democratic lawmakers file new version of maternal health care bill

A state senator hopes that the third time is the charm for a bill aimed at improving maternal care for North Carolina mothers.

Sen. Natalie Murdock, NC-Chatham, along with her Democratic colleagues in the NC House, filed Senate Bill 571/House Bill 725, known as the MOMnibus Act.

The bill, if passed, would establish grants for community-based organizations, provide implicit bias training for maternal care professionals, fund lactation consultant training programs at historically Black colleges, establish a perinatal education grant program and create the “Mom-nibus” initiative, which seeks to bring care to mothers and babies in areas without access care access.

Charity Watkins, an assistant professor of social work at North Carolina Central University, and Gabriel Scott, an MPA with the North Carolina State Coalition of the National Council of Negro Women, both said they experienced the issues many other women of color could face if the bill is not passed.

“I’m highly educated [and] I am able to advocate for myself,” Watkins said. “Yet, I was dismissed, and my symptoms could have easily resulted in me losing my life.”

“I was telling the nurses and the staff, ‘Hey, I’m in full-blown labor. I need some medication, please, for pain management,’ I actually was ignored,” Scott said.

Murdock said one goal of the bill is to make situations like Watkins and Scott’s far less common.

“The data shows us Black women continue to be three to four times more likely to die from childbirth, even with education,” Murdock said.

This is the fourth time Murdock has introduced the MOMnibus. She first sponsored the bill as SB 632/HB 507 in 2021, HB 552/SB 467 in 2023 and SB 838 in 2024.

Dr. Michelle Benoit-Wilson, an OBGYN in the state, said the MOMnibus bill is exactly the kind of legislation the state needs.

“We need to stop using politics as a bouncing ball, as opposed to recognizing the core problem, which is that women are dying, and they shouldn’t be,” Benoit-Wilson said.

The current version has no Republican sponsors, who control both chambers of the state legislature. In all previous iterations, the bill didn’t make it out of the committee in either chamber.

The latest bill is unlikely to pass during the 2025 legislative session, but NC Rep. Julie von Haefen, D-Wake, said getting the messaging out is just as important.

“Even if we can’t get the bill passed in the General Assembly right now, we need to build the momentum so that when we finally are in a position to get some of these things passed, we have the advocates,” von Haefen said.

WRAL New on Friday reached out to State Senate Pro Tem Phil Berger and House Speaker Destin Hall, both Republicans, for comment on the bill and are waiting to hear back.