Black Maternal Health Week 4/11-4/17

This month the pro-life spotlight was on Black Maternal Health week, spanning from April 11th to the 17th. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy related cause than white women. Black Maternal Health Week is an opportunity to highlight this issue and encourages communities to take steps to make sure black mothers are safe, supported, and empowered. 

Many black women report not feeling safe or heard at hospitals and throughout their birth experience. At a Black Maternal Health Equity Summit in Cleveland, mothers said that the main issue they face is not being ignored when something in the pregnancy doesn’t feel right. Hospital workers providing care for these mothers also notice that sometimes the care they receive is substandard compared to white mothers. 

Experience upon experience corroborates this account. Even the world renown tennis champion, Serena Williams, reports that in 2018 she wasn’t taken seriously by medical staff while she was experiencing a pulmonary embolism. Although many mothers across the board might struggle with not feeling heard in medical settings, statistics show that black mothers are particularly at risk from maternal complications, including death. 

Over this week and month, in cities including Atlanta, Cleveland and Fresno there were conferences and community awareness events held to highlight this issue, and continue the conversation for providing solutions and support for black mothers. Medical professionals, researchers and doulas are all also working to better black maternal health. 

Solutions to the high maternal mortality rate center around connecting black women to support in their communities, including medical professionals. In this way, women feel heard and can get immediate help with any issues or complications they experience. This includes access to doulas, who work as a support and advocate for the mother in a birth setting. This can be important for black patients to ensure they are being heard and their concerns are being taken seriously. Events over the course of the week helped connect black mothers to support systems in their communities, enabling them to be empowered and better prepared to tackle birth and motherhood. 

Despite abortion being advocated as “essential health care” for women, maternal mortality rates are not going down, but actually increasing! Despite abortion being (until recently) available and federally protected, risks for pregnant women, especially those in marginalized communities, remains prevalent. Abortion is thus clearly not the solution for proper maternal health care, in fact some could argue that abortion serves as a bandaid for issues that demand much more attention in order to ensure all Americans are receiving proper care.

 Black Maternal Health Week is a positive initiative to support black mothers and babies everywhere, and another step on the journey to a happier and healthy country.