Tag Archives: Serena Williams

Bearing the Burden of Injustice: Black Maternal Mortality

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Mother and babyWhen it comes to maternal mortality, American women don’t all live in the same country. While white women live in Qatar, black women live in Mongolia.

Maternal mortality is death related to complications from pregnancy or childbirth. Most of us don’t come from a time or place where the prospect of dying in childbirth is a tangible possibility — in the past century, as medicine has advanced, maternal mortality rates have plummeted.

To raise healthy families, we need access to general and reproductive health care, including preventive care, prenatal care, and maternity care.

The United States, though, hasn’t come as far as would be expected. Although its wealth should have put it on par with other developed nations like Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, and those in Scandinavia, women in these countries fare far better than those in the United States. So do women in Libya, Bosnia and Herzogovina, Bulgaria, and Kazakhstan, indicating that national priorities — and not necessarily national wealth — are key to ensuring maternal health.

The United States’ high maternal mortality rate is heartbreaking no matter how you look at it, but is even worse for women of color. African-American women are 3.5 times more likely to die as a result of pregnancy or childbirth than white women. Between 2011 and 2013, the maternal mortality rate for white women was 12.7 deaths per 100,000 live births. Comparing that to 2015 data from the World Health Organization (WHO), that rate puts white women’s maternal mortality on par with mothers in Qatar and Bahrain, two wealthy Persian Gulf nations. African-American women, however, suffered 43.5 deaths per 100,000 live births, putting their maternal mortality on par with those of Turkmenistan, Brazil, and Mongolia. Continue reading →

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

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  • I’ve talked about the high rates of maternal mortality among black women many times on this blog before. Yet still I was surprised and horrified to hear that Serena Williams, a woman with significant privilege and resources, could have easily ended up a statistic after the near-death experience she had giving birth to her daughter. (Vice)
  • The crude and overt racist in the White House made some truly abhorrent comments last week, condemning countries and continents with majority black populations as “s**thole countries” while wondering aloud why more people from places like “Norway” don’t immigrate to the U.S. Well, Slate has delved into the differences between how our country treats women and families and how Norway treats women and families, and it’s enlightening to say the least. (Slate)
  • Our xenophobe-in-chief is also “poised to overhaul the HHS civil rights office as part of a broader plan to protect health workers who don’t want to perform abortions, treat transgender patients seeking to transition or provide other services for which they have religious or moral objections.” I have a moral objection to health workers not wanting to treat other human beings who need health care! Health care is a basic human right! (Politico)
  • College campuses in California could see expanded access to abortion for its students. A first-of-its-kind bill in the California legislature would require student health centers at California public colleges and universities to dispense medication abortion. (Rewire)
  • The California story is good news because more and more information is emerging to show that medication abortions are safe and effective, and have very low rates of complications. (The Lily)
  • Some other potential good news: Arizona could become the 10th state to bar mental-health professionals from practicing “conversion therapy,” making attempts to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity illegal. A new bill was introduced into the Legislature last Friday, and we hope with all our hearts it passes! (AZ Central)
  • The Trump administration is determined to push Title X off the rails and once again, the health care of millions of citizens is at risk. (The Hill)
  • Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican weasel who considers himself “pro-life” (so much so that he has never fostered or adopted any children in need), recently urged us to “have more babies,” but is still playing hardball over funding health insurance for children who’ve already been born. The Democrats need to take a stand and stop.this.madness. Period. (Splinter News)
  • When the likes of Mr. Ryan and other opponents of “entitlements” slash assistance for families in need, everyone suffers as a result. Recent research out of the University of Kansas shows a direct link between a family’s ability to access government assistance, such as TANF, and foster care cases. (Rewire)
  • After losing several court battles in relation to their attempts to bar undocumented immigrant teenage girls from having abortions, the the Trump DOJ has showed its cruel and vindictive true colors. They recently tried to reveal an undocumented teen’s abortion to an uncle who threatened to “beat her” if she terminated her pregnancy. The fact that these people are monsters should be lost on no one at this point. They are fully aware this girl is under a direct threat of violence and instead of protecting her, they’re intentionally putting her at risk of physical harm from an abusive family member. They want this girl punished for having the abortion they tried to prevent. This should chill you to the bone, folks. Seriously. (Slate)