This state calls itself the ‘most pro-life.’ But moms there keep dying.
Giving birth in Arkansas, especially its rural southeast, comes with more risk and less care. The challenges feel acute for someone like doula Hajime White.

By Annie Gowen
August 27, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

WARREN, Ark. — The pregnant teen had already picked out a name for her baby, already felt him kick, which made the sight of blood in her underwear all the more frightening as she was getting ready for bed that fall night.

Her mother, Ronica Lawson, called for an ambulance to take them to the hospital five minutes away. As the sirens blared and the EMTs tried to reassure 15-year-old Sa’Ryiah Lincoln, bad news crackled out of the radio. Head to the next county, the EMTs were told. The local hospital no longer delivered babies.

In a state that touts itself as “the most pro-life state in the country,” where abortion is prohibited except to save the life of the mother, timber country in southeast Arkansas is an especially dangerous place to give birth.

Arkansas already has one of the nation’s worst maternal mortality rates, and mothers in this area die at a rate exceeding the state average. Ninety-two percent of recent maternal deaths were preventable, a state review committee found.

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Dan Keating contributed to this report.

By Annie Gowen
Annie Gowen is a correspondent for The Post's National desk. She was the India bureau chief from 2013 to 2018. Twitter