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My mother raised nine children without ever yelling.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to (we definitely strained her patience!) but she simply couldn’t. After a childhood illness damaged all four valves of her heart and she went through heart failure while pregnant, her voice was reduced to a whisper.

It was our job, we learned, to quiet down – no small feat in a household of 11 – and listen to what she had to say. She taught me that sometimes the voice you have to lean in to hear is the most important voice to listen to, and that in a world filled with noise, it’s your job to speak up and make space for those voices.

(My family had a lot of practice with this, frequently telling each other at the dinner table, “Be quiet! Mom’s trying to say something.”)

We, as a society, lift up mothers as superheroes, while at the same time ignoring their voices and doing nothing to make being a mother any less of a herculean feat.

For too long, discussions of the realities of motherhood – from the mundane to dangerous – have been denied entry to the rooms where decisions are made or waved away as “women’s issues.”

Affordable child care, easily accessible OB/GYN services, guaranteed paid family leave, excellent public schools, accommodations for pregnant workers on the job – the list goes on and on because certain lawmakers have ignored mothers’ actual needs and offered hollow words instead of taking action.

That lack of listening has shown up in the thoughtless policies of Kim Reynolds and Iowa Republicans, shuttering labor and delivery units across our state, decimating family planning clinics, and putting miscarriage patients’ lives in danger as medical staff struggle to navigate the GOP’s confusing and arbitrary web of laws trying to ban abortion.

It’s no surprise that Iowa’s maternal mortality rate continues to rise, and it’s shocking and lamentable to read the IDPH’s recent assessment that 100% of pregnancy-related deaths were preventable.

Iowa Democrats listened to folks around the state and put forward proposal after proposal to improve maternal health outcomes and bring down exorbitant child care costs, only to watch them die in Republican-led committees.

Celebrating Mother’s Day is about more than just sending a card or a gift. It’s a chance for us to lean in and listen to what mothers really need, and then take action to make it happen.

Yours,
Rita Hart
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