Advocates and state officials gathered in Yonkers Saturday to come up with a plan to change maternal outcomes among Black women.

During a news conference outside St. John's Hospital in Yonkers, Sen. Chuck Schumer said that New York's maternal mortality rate ranks 30th out of 50 states – hitting women of color the hardest.

According to Schumer, Black mothers are three times more likely to die from pregnancy than Caucasian women, and they are more than twice as likely to have birth complications.

"I never knew my grandmother because she died in childbirth, when my mother was 4," Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins shared. "When she died in childbirth in the 1920s, it was not a conversation. It wasn't a discussion."  

Sen. Schumer is pushing for passage and funding of the Black maternal health "Momnibus Act" to make New York hospitals safer for mothers of color.

The act also includes an expansion of Medicaid for mothers, which includes yearlong postpartum coverage and a major financial investment in St. John's Riverside Hospital in Yonkers. The hospital is the city's only maternity unit.

Advocates say that they know changes can be challenging, but Black mothers deserve better treatment and it's time to deliver it to them.