As it currently stands, the United States has the highest maternal mortality rate (MMR) for a developed country. This is in large part due to how Black women are treated while giving birth. It should be noted that for the sake of the post, I will be referring strictly to people who give birth as women, that being said, not all people who give birth are women, and not all women give birth. As of 2022[i], the MMR is a rate of 10.4 deaths for 100,000 live births. However, when compared to the rate[ii] of Black women, the rate is 49.5 deaths for every 100,000 live births.
This begs the question; how did the situation get this bad? We must go back to modern gynecological practices’ foundation to understand this. The so-called father of modern gynecology is a man named, J. Marion Sims. Sims got his fame and fortune from his experimentation on enslaved women for four years without anesthesia or pain relief. His most “famous” subjects were three enslaved women: Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey. According to the website anarchalucybetsey.org[iii], “Anarcha underwent the most experiments— as many as 30 procedures in three-and-a-half years, all without treatment for pain, and often to an audience of curious doctors.” This means that Anarcha fell victim to likely torturous conditions while being the subject of observation of men, all without her consent. The website is run by artist Michele Browder who has dedicated herself to ensuring the legacy[iv] of the women who she calls, the “mothers of gynecology.” Sims’s legacy stems from the fact that he believed that Black women could not feel pain, thus making them “perfect” to experiment on.
So how does this lead to the current state of Black women’s reproductive healthcare? The prevailing belief is that Black people or specifically Black women have higher pain tolerances are still enduring[v] and actively harming Black patients. One such case is that of Kira Dixon Johnson[vi], who passed away in 2016 from complications following a cesarean section while giving birth to her second son. Her husband, Charles Johnson, has become an activist for Black maternal health following her death. He says that “not just in good health, she was in exceptional health,” Johnson says. She spoke four languages fluently, raced cars, ran marathons, had a pilot’s license and started a hospitality consulting business. But after the delivery, things started to go wrong. Johnson noticed blood in the catheter. He notified nurses and medical staff who ordered blood work and a CT scan, which he says was never performed. An ultrasound hours later showed Kira’s abdomen was filled with fluid. She was losing color, shivering, and sensitive to touch. “There were very clear signs that she was hemorrhaging internally,” he said at the activist rally March for Moms in Washington, D.C., in 2018.” Sadly, Kira’s case is all too common.
So how do we fight this? Healthcare providers must listen to Black women when they say they are in pain and trust them to know their bodies and if something is not right. Women do not deserve to die just from the crime of not being listened to.
By Rebecca Salkin Digital Media Intern
[i] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/03/13/1238269753/maternal-mortality-overestimate-deaths-births-health-disparities
[ii] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-mortality/2022/maternal-mortality-rates-2022.pdf
[iii] https://www.anarchalucybetsey.org
[iv] https://people.com/health/artist-michelle-browder-is-reclaiming-history-for-the-mothers-of-gynecology/
[v] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4843483/
[vi] https://people.com/health/tk-dad-raising-sons-alone-after-wife-dies-in-childbirth/