Once in a while, a public official reveals hypocrisy so blatant that the nation takes bewildered notice and recoils in actual disgust.

A man from Missouri recently claimed the throne as the internet's creepiest main character in a moment of stiff competition for the title. In a public hearing on April 11, Republican state Sen. Mike Moon appeared to reiterate his support for children as young as 12 having the right to marry with parental permission.

"Do you know any kids who have been married at age 12?" Moon asked. "I do. And guess what? They're still married." These comments came five years after Moon and 49 other Missouri Republicans voted against a 2018 bill to curb child marriage. (Thankfully, they were overruled.)

After his recent comments went viral and made national headlines, Moon told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "I do not support adults marrying children."

Is it a relief that one of our lawmakers backed off a statement that seemed to endorse child rape? The bar is admittedly low, but is it this low?

Moon's desire for child brides to have the freedom to marry came back to light in the context of another argument about parental rights. This time, he's leading the charge to strip rights from parents seeking medical care for their transgender children. If we're following Moon's logic, the state must intervene to protect transgender children if a parent allows them to seek gender-affirming care, but the state should NOT intervene if a parent allows their middle school-aged daughter to get married. Got it?

In Missouri, an adult participating in sexual intercourse with a child under the age of 17 may be prosecuted for statutory rape. But one man's statutory rape is another man's wedded bliss.

Let's try a little thought experiment: If Moon had a long salt-and-pepper beard and his skin was just a shade or two darker, and if his words -- "Do you know any kids who have been married at age 12? I do" -- were spoken with a slight Middle Eastern accent, how quickly would his Republican counterparts have spoken out against him?

Moon's exchange with Democratic state Rep. Peter Merideth about child marriage was recorded on video, making it easier for the moment to go viral. The public reaction was as close to unanimous as you can get these days. Most of us do not know any 12-year-old kids who have been married, nor do we wish to. This is not a guy people would want around their children.

It takes something significant nowadays to break through the daily partisan outrage and provoke a genuine emotion. Most of us are worn down -- exhausted from the nastiness and hypocrisy in politics. Even when legitimately bad behavior from public officials comes to light, those on the same political "team" prefer to ignore or discount it.

For example, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was recently exposed by ProPublica for having accepted luxury gifts -- undisclosed, for years -- from a billionaire Republican donor with an extensive collection of Hitler memorabilia. By all accounts, this is unprecedented behavior. Thomas has never denied his questionable actions, but Republicans called the report a "smear" anyway.

Wouldn't it be refreshing for one of them to simply say, "So what? We don't care when it's Our Guy."

In that sense, the collective public shaming of Moon's statement has been oddly comforting.

We still know sleaze when we see it.

The jaw-dropping statistics have made headlines for the past several years: Black women in different parts of America are two to four times more likely to die from pregnancy and childbirth complications than white women.

The hard questions are why this happens and how to change it.

A new documentary, "Birthing Justice," premiering this week on PBS, offers some answers, along with stories of joy, fear and hope. The film reveals the human lives and communities impacted by the crisis in Black maternal health.

Executive producer Denise Pines, the immediate past president of the Medical Board of California, said that when she first heard the grim statistics, she couldn't believe them. She did not personally know anyone who had lost a baby or had a close-call pregnancy or childbirth.

"How can this be happening?" she thought.

She and her business partners decided to explore the topic by filming what was happening on the ground in critical hot spots across the country. Missouri, which has one of the highest rates of Black maternal death in the country, became one of those locations.

In Missouri, Black women are four times more likely to die from pregnancy complications than white women. In St. Louis, Black babies are three times more likely to die before their first birthday than white babies.

Experts talked about why these disparities persist.

Kanika Harris, the director of maternal and child health for the Black Women's Health Imperative, said the biggest misconception is that something in the behavior of Black women -- their diet, exercise or habits -- makes pregnancy and childbirth more dangerous for them.

"There is nothing we are doing that is so different from anyone else in this country," she said. In fact, research that controls for income and education levels finds that Black women still die at higher rates from pregnancy complications than white women. The documentary cites multiple reasons: Black women are more likely to have undiagnosed conditions prior to pregnancy, are more likely to have their concerns and complaints ignored during childbirth, and are less likely to have access to postpartum care.

For all women, it's more dangerous to give birth today than it was 30 years ago: The overall maternal death rate in 1987 was 7.2 deaths per 100,000 live births; in 2021, it was 32.9. That's 10 times higher than many other high-income countries -- but still less than half of the rate for Black women in America, which reached 69.9 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2021.

The most tragic part is that most of these losses are preventable. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention compiled data from state committees that review these deaths and found that 84% of pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. were preventable.

"There's something deeply wrong when in 2022, we can't keep our moms alive," said Dr. Joia Crear-Perry, founder of the National Birth Equity Collaborative, in the documentary.

The role that bias and racism in the medical system play in the disproportionate number of Black maternal deaths is underscored throughout the film. Olympic track-and-field star Allyson Felix appears in the film to share her pregnancy story. She was unexpectedly diagnosed at 32 weeks pregnant with severe preeclampsia -- a life-threatening complication -- which resulted in an emergency C-section.

In a 2018 magazine interview, tennis champion Serena Williams revealed that she also experienced severe health complications after giving birth because doctors neglected to listen to her about her existing medical conditions.

"Birthing Justice" director and co-writer Monique N. Matthews says she didn't want to make a film that just highlighted the scary headlines. As a Black woman, she said focusing on the terrible statistics makes her think, "So, I have to be scared to bring life into this world, too?"

She wanted to tell a story about Black maternal health anchored in resistance and fueled by joy.

"Black joy is a weapon and a tool," she said.

The documentary contains interviews with people on the front lines working on solutions. That includes Jamaa Birth Village in Ferguson, Missouri, and its founder, Okunsola M. Amadou, who has helped train more than 200 Black doulas in St. Louis.

The documentary's website, birthingjustice.com, offers resources for those who are pregnant, along with a section on policy and legislative initiatives that viewers can advocate for to address these problems.

The film tells a compelling story of an unacceptable problem facing pregnant women in America.

More importantly, it shares ways we can change the system to save mothers' lives.

This year's women's NCAA basketball championship, the most-watched in history, has provoked a heated debate about how race influences our perception of good sportsmanship and competitive rivalries.

Louisiana State star forward Angel Reese, who won the women's March Madness Most Outstanding Player award, waved her open hand in front of her face at the Iowa Hawkeyes' Caitlin Clark near the end of the Tigers' victory on April 2.

The gesture, meaning "you can't see me," had also been used by Clark toward a Louisville player in the Elite Eight. Bleacher Report said that in that same game, Clark said to an opponent: "You're down by 15 points. Shut up."

ESPN produced a segment hailing Clark, who is white, as the "Queen of Clapbacks," which highlighted moments when she taunted other players. But when Reese, who is Black, used the gesture, the reaction was very different.

Dave Portnoy, founder of the site Barstool Sports, tweeted that Reese was a "classless piece of (expletive)." Commentator Keith Olbermann called her a "(expletive) idiot," also on Twitter.

Part of what makes Twitter so revealing is that we get to see people's immediate first takes. We tweet before we've had a chance to pause and think about what might be fueling our reactions and whether there are any inconsistencies in our perception. Those initial moments after an event are when our subconscious plays a greater role in our response.

Olbermann later clarified his remark: "I apologize for being uninformed last night about the back story on this. I don't follow hoops, college or pro, men or women. I had no idea about Clark. Both were wrong."

Olbermann's admission in this situation is a rarity. Most people double down when they are challenged, especially when it comes to matters of racial bias.

The ones who doubled down on their criticism of Reese said the circumstances of the championship game were different. Mark Harris with OutKick argued that Clark "threw up her hand for half a second while walking to the bench," while "Reese did the motion multiple times two feet from Clark's face."

That kind of parsing, which ignores the more aggressive moments of Clark's previous behavior, comes across as a missed opportunity to reflect on how we instinctively judge human behavior.

Do we respond the same way to trash talk among professional male athletes as we do among women? Does a temper tantrum by John McEnroe or Jimmy Connors provoke the same feelings and coverage as Serena Williams' outbursts?

Reese called out a double standard in how she is perceived versus other players. In the press conference after the victory, she said: "All year, I was critiqued for who I was. I don't fit the narrative. I don't fit the box that y'all want me to be in. I'm too hood. I'm too ghetto. Y'all told me that all year. But when other people do it, and y'all don't say nothing."

It's undeniable that intense rivalries, leading to taunting and trash talk, have long been part of the spectacle of sports. We can debate the role and appropriateness of such behavior -- from youth players to elite professionals -- and disagree about when it crosses the line.

Like many parents of student athletes, I want my own child to show respect to his competitors and win with grace. It goes back to the fundamental Golden Rule of treating others how you want to be treated.

But before I pile criticism on a 20-year-old college student, I'm going to check myself to see if I react consistently when another player behaves the same way. Am I more forgiving if a player on the team I support is taunting or trashing our sports rivals? Am I more understanding if a player looks like me? Am I more outraged when it's a young Black woman taunting an outstanding white player who has been crowned "The Queen of Clapbacks"?

If so, that might say more about me than her.