New York governor signs bill to establish statewide doula registry as infant mortality rate rises
NEW YORK — Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday signed legislation to establish a statewide doula directory, aiming to improve New Yorkers’ access to childbirth experts and to combat a recent nationwide rise in infant mortality.
The bill requires the state Health Department to create and maintain a doula database, promoting the use of doulas. Hochul also outlined more than $4 million in state funding for regional health care centers focused on the periods before and after birth.
Doulas are trained to provide crucial counseling during the process of childbirth, but do not deliver babies. Mothers who have the support of doulas are less likely to experience complications or to require Caesarean sections.
Black women are three times as likely as white women to die of a pregnancy-related cause, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We’re not going to lose any mother or any baby because of the color of their skin,” Hochul said at a news conference in Manhattan, pointing to reporting that has found American infant mortality rates rose in 2022, a reversal after steady improvement over two decades.
“Everyone deserves a healthy start from the very, very first breath,” added Hochul, a Democrat and the first woman elected governor of New York.
In 2022, the provisional infant mortality rate creeped up by 3% in the U.S., according to the CDC. And the number of maternal deaths — deaths of women during and shortly after a pregnancy — spiked by about 40% between 2020 and 2021, the CDC reported.
The doula bill was sponsored by state Sen. Samra Brouk, a Rochester Democrat, and Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, a Long Island Democrat.
“Every woman deserves joy in birth,” Solages said.
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