Childbirth Is Deadlier For Black Families, Even If They’re Wealthy.
It's racism not race that is driving America’s maternal health crisis.
An expansive new study featured in the New York Times confirms the thesis of my book and what women’s health experts have been telling us for years: It’s racism not race that is driving America’s maternal health crisis.
This new examination finds that the richest mothers and their newborns are the most likely to survive the year after childbirth, unless the family is Black. The study states that the richest Black mothers and their babies are twice as likely to die in America as the richest white mothers and their babies.
The findings, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, includes nearly all the infants born to first-time mothers from 2007 to 2016 in California, the state with the most annual births. For the first time, this study combines income tax data with birth, death and hospitalization records and demographic data from the Census Bureau and the Social Security Administration.
The data analysis also finds that premature infants born to poor parents are more likely to die than those born into the richest families, but there is one group that doesn’t gain the same protection from being rich: Black mothers and babies.
Although research has repeatedly shown that Black mothers and babies have the worst childbirth outcomes in America, this study is different because it’s the first of its size to show how the risks of childbirth vary by both race and parental income. Now we have data that backs what women’s health experts have known for decades: Black families, regardless of their socioeconomic status, are worse off.
The New York Times’s feature stipulates that there is clear evidence that Black patients experience racism in health care settings pointing out how in childbirth, mothers are treated differently and given different access to interventions. Studies also find that Black infants are more likely to survive if their doctors are Black.
The experiences of high-profile, megastar Black women, such as Beyonce and Serena Williams, experiencing near-fatal complications and almost dying in childbirth helped spotlight how not even the most famous and wealthy Black women escape this level of lethal racism.
But why the heck are any women dying giving birth in the world’s richest democracy in the year 2023? It obviously wasn’t always like this in America. In fact, the Harvard Public Health Magazine points out how after decades of decline, maternal deaths began rising in the United States around 1990, a significant shift compared to other rich nations.
And things did not get better. By 2013, maternal mortality rates had more than doubled in the United States and continues to rise. Experts find that the U.S. maternal mortality death rate in 2020 was more than three times the rate of most other high-income countries.
If you are seething with rage about these numbers you are beyond justified. But in the midst of your rage, remember that the majority of these deaths are preventable. Women are needlessly dying in childbirth despite all the resources, knowledge, and modern-day interventions we have because women’s lives are simply not a priority.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes maternal mortality an indicator of women’s overall position in society, but in America, we have made giving birth a business.
And it’s not just rich people who stand to get the most out of this racist and deadly system, but rich white people.