WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today kicks off Black Maternal Health Week, a week founded by Black Mamas Matter Alliance for awareness, activism, and community-building to bring visibility to Black-led maternal health initiatives. In recognition of this week, Laphonza Butler, president of EMILY’s List, released the following statement:
“EMILY’s List is proud to recognize Black Maternal Health Week in an effort to continue to shed light on the inequities that Black women face when trying to access primary health care generally and reproductive health care specifically in this country. We applaud the work done by the Black Mamas Matter Alliance to establish this week and honor the work of Black women on the ground who ensure that the conversation around Black maternal health does not end until Black women are centered and racial disparities in health care are no longer a national crisis.
“For too long, Black women have been barred from positions of power throughout our government, leaving us without a voice on issues that impact us the most. Women endorsed by EMILY’s List like Rep. Lauren Underwood and Rep. Alma Adams’ are leading efforts to pass the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act, a clear example of why Black women need to be in all rooms where decisions are made. At EMILY’s List, we will continue to work to elect more Democratic pro-choice Black women up and down the ballot to ensure representation on issues that directly impact bodies and lives.”
EMILY’s List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, has raised over $700 million to elect Democratic pro-choice women candidates. With a grassroots community of over five million members, EMILY's List helps Democratic women win competitive campaigns – across the country and up and down the ballot – by recruiting and training candidates, supporting and helping build strong campaigns, researching the issues that impact women and families, running nearly $50 million in independent expenditures in the last cycle alone, and turning out women voters and voters of color to the polls. Since our founding in 1985, we have helped elect the country's first woman as vice president, 159 women to the House, 26 to the Senate, 16 governors, and more than 1,300 women to state and local office. More than 40% of the candidates EMILY’s List has helped elect to Congress have been women of color. After the 2016 election, more than 60,000 women reached out to EMILY's List about running for office laying the groundwork for the next decade of candidates for local, state, and national offices. In our effort to elect more women in offices across the country, we have created our Run to Win program, expanded our training program, including a Training Center online, and trained thousands of women.
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