U.S. maternal death rate on rise; black women at increased risk
Charles Johnson IV took out his cellphone, as he had done many times before, and recorded his wife lying in a hospital bed while she held her newborn. Kira Johnson had just given birth to Langston, the Johnsons’ second child, and she was glowing.
Charles, then 36, wanted to record every moment. He had also filmed the birth of their firstborn, when they went on their vacations together, in concerts they had attended – this was his way of preserving his family’s happy moments.
But that 2016 video, which he keeps on his cellphone, was the last one he made while Kira Johnson was alive. She died hours later of internal bleeding caused by a lacerated bladder that happened when doctors performed her C-section, Charles Johnson said.
“The thought that I would leave [the hospital] without her never crossed my mind,” Charles Johnson said. “Never crossed my mind.”
The Johnsons’ story depicts a blunt truth about women’s health in the United States – about 700 women die a year as a result of pregnancy or delivery complications, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.
At a time when lawmakers in some states are trying to tighten access to reproductive care for women, the rate of maternal deaths in the United States is rising. The United States has the highest rate of pregnancy-related deaths among developed nations, a report from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) shows.
The stunning figures from the CDC suggest that half of those deaths may have been prevented, and that black women are three to four times more likely to die than white women.
The disparity reflects issues that go beyond education and income. In 2018, Beyoncé and Serena Williams shared their life-threatening experiences during childbirth, showing how black women, even international stars who can presumably afford the best in medical care, face greater pregnancy-related risks than their white counterparts.
“We know that the disparities in maternal mortality are incredibly significant,” said ACOG president Lisa Hollier. “If you look across a listing of the developed nations, we’re about number 47 in terms of our maternal mortality rate.”
Days before the longest partial government shutdown, Congress passed a law requiring states to investigate each and every pregnancy-related death to understand what goes wrong and prevent mothers from dying. ACOG explained the statistics provide a snapshot, but “are not sufficient or always reliable, and may either overcount or undercount deaths.”