“I should have been able to act without the government's interference in order to save my daughter's life,” said Savannah mother Callie Beale.

Mom's Heart Matters out of Southeast Georgia is in its second year of implementation. 

Women from Georgia spoke about their experiences being pregnant and giving birth while incarcerated at Sen. Jon Ossoff’s  Atlanta hearing of the Senate Committee on Human Rights.

A recently approved biomarker test can help pinpoint which patients are at highest risk for preeclampsia, which is one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in Georgia. Champions of the test hail it as a life-saving tool that takes the guesswork out of identifying which patients are developing the hypertensive disorder that only occurs during and after pregnancy.

Georgia’s abortion law, the so-called “LIFE Act,” allows for abortions after the detection of what the law describes as “fetal heartbeat.” It’s exceptions like these that were at the center of the Supreme Court’s latest hearing on abortion.

Georgia ranks as one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the nation. Mama Glow is one organization working to improve the stark racial disparities and health care for Black women overall. 

Gov. Brian Kemp celebrated 50 years of friendship between Georgia and the Japanese Consulate in Atlanta. Lawmakers in both chambers also acknowledged Maternal Health Awareness Day. And Sen. Greg Dolezal (R-Cumming) introduced a resolution to look at Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ alleged mishandling of state money during her indictment of former President Trump. 

A $120 million International African American Museum opened this week in Charleston, S,C. The galleries allow visitors to step back in history at Gadsden’s Wharf, where tens of thousands of enslaved Africans arrived in America, the genesis of generations of health disparities.

Years before the Bamberg County Hospital closed in 2012, and the next-closest hospital in neighboring Barnwell shut its doors in 2016, those facilities had stopped delivering babies.

A federal program in remote New Mexico has helped hundreds of pregnant mothers stay healthy, but it's running out of time and money despite a growing national maternity care crisis.

Rates of maternal mortality in the U.S. have soared, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. As Mother's Day nears, experts remember the women who died in childbirth. 

Legislation extending aid to pregnant women in Georgia through the federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program sailed through the state House of Representatives on Monday.

Friday on Political Rewind: On Jan. 21, 2020, the first case of COVID-19 was detected in the U.S.. Since then, more than 2 million Georgians contracted the virus and nearly 40,000 have died. As a milder variant goes around this winter, we ask a panel of health experts how to best protect ourselves.

On the Monday Dec. 19 edition of Georgia Today: Gun violence claims more teen lives over the weekend in Atlanta, holiday travelers should be on the lookout for human trafficking victims, and more jobs are coming to Georgia

On the Friday Dec. 9 episode of Georgia Today: Michael Flynn testifies in Atlanta, another EV battery plant is coming to Georgia, and pregnancy-related deaths are on the rise.