Truth | The Tragedy of Black Pregnant Women in America: The Mortality Rate is Three Times That of White Women in Healthcare | America | Truth | America
Sharon is in the nursery
How serious is racial discrimination in today's United States? This can be seen from a series of special reports recently released by the Associated Press. This report focuses on the health inequality experienced by black Americans from birth to death: black children are more susceptible to asthma, black youth face increasingly serious mental health crises, black people are more susceptible to hypertension and Alzheimer's disease... What is particularly distressing is that the maternal mortality rate among black Americans is disproportionately high, showing significant racial differences.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, black maternal mortality rates are the highest in the country, with 69.9 deaths per 100000 live births in 2021, almost three times higher than white maternal mortality rates. Behind the cold data lies the collapse of families one by one.
Public Radio in the United States reported a sad story in 2017. In a funeral home in western Atlanta, many people came to mourn a black woman. This woman's name is Sharon, and she is a true social elite. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Sociology, two Master's degrees, and a dual degree PhD. She has served as a Lieutenant in the United States Public Health Service Officer Corps and as an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States. Throughout Sharon's career, she devoted herself to studying how structural inequality, trauma, and violence can lead to illness. Unfortunately, Sharon herself has also become a victim of structural inequality. In 2016, she discovered that she was pregnant with her first child, and she was very excited about it. However, three weeks after giving birth, she passed away due to illness.
Sharon was born in a city with severe racism in the United States, and any achievement requires more effort than ordinary people, which has led to her facing enormous pressure and some health problems, including high blood pressure. She experienced a surge in blood pressure during pregnancy, but the doctor did not show the necessary attention. During the postpartum period, Sharon's blood pressure remained high. She described herself as feeling "just not right," but the doctor only believed that this may be related to "insufficient pain suppression.". Not long after, Sharon passed away due to complications of hypertension. According to Good Morning US News, Sharon's mother Irving and Sharon's best friend Pryol have both stated that after Sharon gave birth, her medical team did not pay enough attention to complications related to her health.
Reagan McDonald Mosley, Chief Medical Officer of the American Parent Child Planning Alliance, stated that the US healthcare system has some chronic problems, such as unequal emphasis on the lives of black and white women. The Associated Press reported that some healthcare providers still hold misconceptions about the biological differences between black and white individuals, such as believing that black individuals have "less sensitive nerve endings, thicker skin, and stronger bones.". Many doctors in the United States even believe that black people already have various deficiencies, which leads to inadequate treatment for black patients and insufficient attention to their illnesses.
Sharon's death is a tragedy, which makes one wonder: how can the health of black women be guaranteed when a woman with such a high status and abundant resources also experiences misfortune?
Angelica Lyons, a public health lecturer at the University of Alabama in the United States, has a similar experience. She suffered from stomach pain during pregnancy, but her help was ignored. When her abdominal pain worsened and she began to vomit bile, doctors and nurses still told her that she was only suffering from ordinary contractions. It was not until the fetal heart rate suddenly dropped that she received attention. She underwent an emergency cesarean section and almost died of sepsis. Her son Malik was born 8 weeks premature, weighing only about 2.27 kilograms, and stayed in the intensive care unit for a month.
Malik's example reflects the experiences of many African American babies. Due to the neglect of the mother's health, these babies are more likely to die and are also more likely to give birth prematurely, laying the groundwork for health problems that may accompany them throughout their lives. In Alabama, the infant mortality rate for white mothers in 2021 was 5.8 ‰, while the infant mortality rate for black mothers was 12.1 ‰, an increase from the previous year's 10.9 ‰. The poison of racism in the United States has already soaked infants before they arrived in this world.
Data confirming racial discrimination in the US healthcare system is abundant. According to an article in the 2021 issue of the US Census Bureau, researchers at the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota found that when black newborns were taken care of by black doctors instead of white doctors, the in-hospital mortality rate of black newborns decreased by one-third. According to the Texas Tribune in 2022, in recent years, the overall incidence of obstetric bleeding complications in Texas has decreased, but the incidence of complications in black women has increased by nearly 10%.
Black pregnant women in the United States may not only face discrimination from doctors and nurses, but also enjoy poorer medical conditions. A 2017 survey by the American news survey website Publica showed that hospitals that serve more black patients are more likely to experience complications. Elizabeth Howell, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Mount Sinai Ican School of Medicine, conducted a more detailed study on racial differences between hospitals in New York City. She found that black mothers were twice as likely to suffer harm during childbirth as white mothers, and the same was true after adjusting for variables, indicating that some racial differences may be due to hospital quality. In another study, she estimated that if black women gave birth in the same hospital as white women, their likelihood of injury would decrease by nearly 50%. In the United States, three-quarters of black mothers give birth in about a quarter of hospitals, and Howell believes that if these hospitals can improve their care, racial disparities can be reduced. However, for some black women, the helpless reality is that even if they know that some hospitals have poor conditions, they have no other choice due to the conditions of their residential community.
Some healthcare workers have racial discrimination bias, black pregnant women have access to inferior medical facilities compared to white women, and the health of black pregnant women and infants is not valued... These are all old problems within the US healthcare system, but to this day, there has not been much improvement. For many black babies, this is just the beginning, and structural discrimination in American society awaits them in the future.
