Pregnant patients and newborns in Minnesota are paying the price for a fear that has nothing to do with their health. During Operation Metro Surge — the recent immigration crackdown that flooded the Twin Cities with immigration agents — immigrant families went into hiding rather than risk arrest, detention, or deportation. Doctors are now documenting the toll in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM): a mother left malnourished and suffering postpartum psychosis after months of isolation and fear, miscarriages and stillbirths, premature births tied to malnutrition, and parents who went weeks without seeing their own baby in the neonatal intensive care unit because they were too afraid to walk into a hospital.

One south Minneapolis clinic didn't wait for someone else to fix this. When Inspire Change Clinic's patients started missing appointments, nurse practitioner Munira Maalimisaq shifted the clinic to home visits, telehealth, medication delivery, and even transportation for patients afraid to call an ambulance. But most hospitals and health systems in Minnesota haven't built that same safety net.

"The pathways that healthcare had relied on were not functional," said Dr. Jennifer Needle-Suarez, a University of Minnesota pediatrician who co-authored the NEJM article, according to the Minnesota Reformer.

Minnesota's hospitals, health systems, and Governor Tim Walz have the power to change that — by requiring safe, fear-free pathways to prenatal, postpartum, and newborn care regardless of immigration status, before another family loses a pregnancy or a newborn to fear instead of medicine.

Sign the petition to demand Minnesota guarantee safe healthcare access for immigrant mothers and newborns — before another child pays the price for being too afraid to go to the doctor.