Mississippi ranked worst state for women’s health care: Report

Women’s health in the United States is in a “perilous place” as preventable deaths keep rising, and nowhere is it worse than in Mississippi, according to a new state scorecard on women’s health and reproductive care from The Commonwealth Fund.

The scorecard ranks all 50 states and Washington, D.C., on how well they provide reproductive care and overall health care to women. The highest-ranking states include Massachusetts, Vermont and Rhode Island.

“It serves as glaring reminder that where you live matters to your health and health care,” Commonwealth Fund President Joseph Betancourt said in a press call.  

The Magnolia State came in last place on the scorecard’s state ranking, in part, due to its high maternal mortality rate, high rate of cervical and breast cancer deaths and complete ban on abortion.  

Mississippi’s last abortion clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, closed in 2022.  

In 2018, the clinic and one of its doctors challenged a state law banning abortions at 15 weeks. The case ultimately reached the Supreme Court, which used it to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that federally enshrined the right to abortion.  

Mississippi and the other states that make up the Mississippi Delta region have the highest maternal mortality rate in the country, with a sizeable percentage of the area’s counties not having a single hospital or birth center with obstetric providers offering obstetric care, according to The Commonwealth Fund.  

The maternal mortality rate in Mississippi was 44.6 deaths per 100,000 live births between 2020 and 2022, more than 1.5 times the national average of 26.3, according to the scorecard.  

Southern states across the board have the highest rates of breast and cervical cancer deaths in the country, and Mississippi’s death rate is the second highest out of those states.  

Mississippi’s death rate for women with breast and cervical cancer in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, was 27.3 per 100,000 women, nearly 7 percentage points higher than the national average, according to the analysis.  

Breast and cervical cancer are both treatable and, in some cases, preventable with timely screenings and health care, and the high rate of deaths in the state from these two cancers could in part be linked to low screening rates.  

Fewer women in Mississippi are receiving regular mammograms, with just 73 percent of 50- to 74-year-old women in the state receiving a mammogram in the past two years, about 4 percentage points lower than the national average, according to the analysis.  

About 80 percent of women between the ages of 21 and 65 in Mississippi have received a Pap smear in the past three years, which is 2 percentage points lower than the national average and 9 percentage points lower than the percentage in the best-performing state, data from the analysis shows.  

About 14 percent of women in Mississippi do not have health insurance, which is 4 percentage points higher than the national average, the analysis found.

The state is also suffering from an extreme shortage of maternity care providers like doctors and certified nurse midwives, with 60.4 providers per 100,000 women aged 15 to 44, a rate roughly 18 percentage points lower than the national average.