Stillbirth prevention group celebrates legislative win in VP Kamala Harris’ office

Healthy Birth Day spent years advocating for a bill that would allow the use of federal funds to prevent stillbirths. 

July 22 would have marked Grace Elizabeth’s 21st birthday had she not been stillborn due to a true knot of the umbilical cord. Her parents thought her death was preventable and have spent the ensuing years hoping to prevent other families from experiencing that pain. 

“Our doctors kind of led us to believe this never happens to women; it’s very rare,” said Grace’s mother, Janet Petersen, a Democratic state senator from Des Moines, Iowa, and a co-founder of the Iowa-based Healthy Birth Day nonprofit.

Petersen and her husband, Brian Pattinson, weren’t convinced that their daughter’s death was an anomaly, especially after a conversation with two pastors from their church. The pastors informed them that another woman from their congregation, Tiffan Yamen, had also recently lost a daughter to stillbirth. 

Petersen and Yamen didn’t know each other but connected to work through their grief together. They soon met more mothers who had lost children to stillbirth, and in 2008, five of them formed the Healthy Birth Day nonprofit.

“It’s focused on preventing stillbirths and also helping to reduce racial disparities in pregnancy loss,” Petersen said.

Healthy Birth Day Founders Tiffan Yamn, Kerry Biondi-Morlan, Jan Caruthers, Kate Safris, and Janet Petersen inside of Vice President Kamala Harris’ ceremonial office at the White House. Photo submitted.

In the nearly two decades since tragedy brought the group together, the women and countless other parents have lobbied lawmakers across the country to support legislation to try and prevent stillbirth and fund research to reduce incidences of it. 

Those legislative efforts have bore fruit this year.

President Joe Biden is expected to sign the Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act into law soon. The bill passed 408-3 in the US House of Representatives in May and unanimously in the US Senate in June.

This legislation allows state health departments across America to use a portion of existing and allocated federal funds to implement measures meant to curtail stillbirth, including “tracking and awareness of fetal movements, improvement of birth timing for pregnancies with risk factors, initiatives that encourage safe sleeping positions during pregnancy, screening and surveillance for fetal growth restriction,” and much more.

“We didn’t have lobbyists working on this; we had the power of parents,” Petersen said.

To commemorate the occasion, Vice President Kamala Harris’ office hosted Petersen, Yamen, and other Healthy Birth Day staff and volunteers at the White House on Monday. Healthy Birth Day Board Chair Deidre DeJear, a mentee of the Vice President, made this possible.

“Deidre was instrumental in getting the issue to Vice President Harris’ staff attention, and they wanted to do something to help us celebrate the success of the bill making its way to the White House,” Petersen said. 

Harris’ staff arranged for the Healthy Birth Day members to hear remarks from members of the Biden-Harris administration, parents of stillborn children, and medical experts. Healthy Birth Day CEO Emily Price also spoke.

Healthy Birth Day CEO Emily Price.

Petersen was grateful that she and other parents of stillborn children had the opportunity to engage directly with people who could make a difference.

“Because, quite honestly, our country is absolutely not doing enough,” she said.

Petersen also appreciated that Congress actually worked together to pass this legislation. The Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act was co-sponsored by Republican Ashley Hinson of Iowa and Democrat Alma Adams of North Carolina in the House, and Democrat Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Republican Bill Cassidy of Louisiana in the Senate.

“When things seem so toxic right now politically, it is an example of believing your country can and should be doing a better job at something and just forging onward,” Petersen said.

Petersen and her husband had a toddler when Grace died, and they have gone on to have two more children since her death.

“My daughter, Maggie, who turns 20 in August, was due on the same due date as Grace’s due date, so it was definitely an emotional roller coaster being pregnant again and being at the same point in my pregnancy again,” Petersen said.

Petersen said that grief and anger over Grace’s death served as fuel for her lobbying efforts, and even with this bill’s passage, she knows the work of Healthy Birth Day is far from done.

“We are a prevention organization. We’re not a bereavement organization because our goal is to prevent it from happening in the first place,” Petersen said of stillbirth.