Sen. Natalie Murdock on efforts to improve maternal health and the new energy of NC Democrats

News & Views

Senator Natalie Murdock (Photo: NCGA)

The North Carolina General Assembly has mostly wrapped up the business its leaders intend to deal with in 2024, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t some important matters that got left on the table. Take the vexing issue of maternal health. For decades North Carolina has experienced big and persistent problems in this area – especially for moms of color.

For some time now, Senator Natalie Murdock of Durham and Chatham Counties has been trying to convince Republican leaders to appropriate modest sums to tackle this issue, but once again this year she ran into a brick wall. Fortunately, she’s not giving up on her efforts to raise this issue or her concerns about the highly questionable funding that GOP lawmakers have directed to so-called crisis pregnancy centers.

In Part One of our recent extended conversation with Murdock, we discussed several sobering facts about maternal health and mortality in North Carolina and her ongoing efforts to convince Republican legislative leaders to allow consideration of a bill known as the Momnibus Act that would tackle the issue.

In Part Two of our chat, we turned to the subject of politics and, in particular, the new levels of enthusiasm she’s seeing among many North Carolina Democrats and Independents in the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s decision to step aside and pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris. And as Sen. Murdock explained, while the change at the top of the ticket is making a big impact, the fall election is still likely to come down to which side is more successful in building an on-the-ground get-out-the-vote effort over the coming weeks.