Black women in Texas are dying at the highest rates of all. A 2016 joint report by the Texas Department of State Health Services’ Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Task Force found that black mothers accounted for 11.4% of Texas births in 2011 and 2012, but 28.8% of pregnancy-related deaths.
“This is a crisis,” said Marsha Jones, executive director of the Afiya Center, a Dallas-based nonprofit that has taken on the issue. In May, the center published its first report: “We Can’t Watch Black Women Die.”
According to the CDC Foundation, nearly 60 percent of maternal deaths are preventable. And two leading causes of maternal death—hemorrhage and preeclampsia, a disorder caused by pregnancy and associated with high blood pressure—are the most preventable. Underlying conditions like anemia, hypertension, diabetes and obesity seem to be more prevalent among Black women.
The legacy of American doctors abusing, including forcibly sterilizing, Black patients still has repercussions. Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, a reproductive justice organization for women of color, and cofounder of Black Mamas Matter Alliance, says to Essence.com, “We still have to battle the fact that people have those memories that they pass down from generation to generation.” That history “definitely prevents people from going in for care,” she adds. Elliott Main, M.D., medical director of the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative (CMQCC), which is dedicated to improving maternal health, says, “The lack of trust between African-American women and their doctors and hospitals can impair the kind of care that you get.”