Childbirth in the United States is broken. This is not merely an opinion, and the data keep adding up.

The U.S. maternal mortality rate, already the highest in the developed world, has more than doubled in two decades, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report found that 1 in 5 women experienced mistreatment in their maternity care. Columbia University spent two decades protecting a predator who abused more than 245 people in his obstetrics practice. Up to 45% of people describe their birth experience as “traumatic.” In a country with 4 million births each year, that’s 1.8 million people traumatized while bringing life into the world.