Systemic racism, politics prevent Black expectant mothers from getting needed health care
(Art by Tatiana Bass/iStock Images)
Last week was Black Maternal Health Week, and Mother’s Day is just around the corner — a prefect time to focus on the fact that the critical health care an expectant mother needs remains unavailable for many.
That’s especially true for Black mothers and their unborn babies.
The detrimental and deadly impact of systemic racism in the access and delivery of needed health care services for Blacks, generally, is not a new phenomenon or rare occurrence.
Blacks have experienced and continue to experience sub-standard healthcare, if and when they are able to access needed treatment at all.
The negative experiences can range from not being able to access preventive and basic primary care that would detect and manage potentially debilitating diseases and health conditions at an early stage, to not receiving necessary and critical information from the health care providers during an encounter, typical exam, or office visit.
The data around this prevalent practice is both alarming and conclusive.
The situation is even more dire for Black pregnant women, who are three times more likely to die than white women from pregnancy-related causes.
When an expectant mother cannot access or receives poor quality health care services, the potential dangers are too often catastrophic for both mother and child.
Complications and deaths among Black mothers and their babies are too commonplace in a health care system that boasts of being among the best in the world. The United States is the only industrialized country where the maternal mortality rate is increasing.
Why?
As if systemic racism isn’t enough to undermine the availability of adequate care for pregnant Black women, politics has to have its role — both proactive and passive.
How can we on the one hand be so pro-life, railing about protecting the unborn, when we are not willing to make sure that both mom and baby come through the pregnancy safe and healthy?
The Biden administration proclaimed April 11—17 as Black Maternal Health Week 2024. The purpose was to convey the urgency to continue efforts to reduce maternal mortality rates and provide better healthcare.
The proclamation vividly describes what happens too frequently when Black pregnant women seek assistance when they are experiencing a complication: They are dismissed or ignored by the very health care providers who should be caring for them.
Many organizations, small businesses, grassroots organizations and funding institutions came together during that week to increase public awareness and momentum about the need to address Black maternal health.
But periodic attention in the form of a designated week or month, a special appropriation or limited funding grant here and there, sadly is only a periodic and partial salvo — not a long-term solution.
What will be done to bring about meaningful and lasting changes when it comes to Black pregnant women being able to access and receive the critical prenatal and postnatal care they need?
There is a group of lawmakers from several Midwestern states — Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska among them — who are working to get substantial policies and appropriations passed. Both Missouri and Kansas have substantially higher pregnancy-related mortality rates among Black women than white.
The package of bills, the Black Maternal Momnibus Act (Momnibus Act) that is comprised of 13 measures to address the problem holistically — seek to improve outcomes by looking at the various aspects of what constitute a quality of life for an expectant mother.
Day-to-day issues such as adequate nutrition, transportation, concomitant health care issues like substance use disorders, mental health and other wellness challenges are being addressed.
First introduced in 2020, currently the caucus of lawmakers supporting the Momnibus Act is comprised only of Democrats.
How can promoting healthy pregnancies and reducing the risk of health complications that could result in the death of the mother and her unborn baby be a partisan issue?
One would think that those who are anti-abortion and pro-life supporters would be leading the fight for the availability and access to quality maternal healthcare.
If not leading the charge, certainly being supportive of the effort.
But the data shows something entirely different. The states with the strictest abortion bans have the poorest and weakest outcomes for maternal and child health.
Where does the disconnect lie?
More importantly, what is its cause?
It is a question worth serious consideration since it continues to pervade and influence all other aspects of America life.
Unfortunately, the delivery of healthcare services is no exception.
Not even for Black unborn babies and the mothers who have chosen and are trying to give them life.
For those organizations, community and parent groups, funders who have been working in the trenches for decades to reduce the mortality rates among expectant Black mothers and there babies, they are to be appreciated and commended.
But they, alone, cannot solve this prevalent and increasing health problem that some are characterizing as reaching a crisis level.
Like so many issues, it gets our attention when someone with some notoriety and celebrity suffers or dies. But the shock and awe only last until another headline of a different nature supersedes it.
How can we on the one hand be so pro-life, railing about protecting the unborn, when we are not willing to make sure that both mom and baby come through the pregnancy safe and healthy?
Is the disconnect — the blind spot, the hypocrisy — due to the age-old scourge and nemesis of systemic racism? Is it due to entrenched and irrational partisan politics?
Or, have they come together to form a destructive and deadly cocktail whose numbing effect continues to keep many negative aspects of Black life in America in its clutches?
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