Black mothers continue to die during childbirth at alarmingly higher rates in the U.S., regardless of socioeconomic status, than their white counterparts. Many said a simple solution to this problem is learning to listen to Black women.
“We know about the reports, we know about the statistics, and the recommendations. This is a call to action,” said Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who chairs the Brooklyn Democratic Party and is the State Assembly Majority Whip.
She is a fierce advocate for Black maternal health and determined to move the needle on dire city and state mortality statistics for other Black and brown birthing people in a positive direction.
Bichotte Hermelyn has spearheaded laws like Mickie’s Law (A10659) and the Jonah Bichotte Cowan Law (S8525A /A2770C), which was named after her first son, who died shortly after birth.
“I was a survivor of maternal crisis, disparity, where I was discriminated against. Not cared for. Pushed out. I was in despair and pain, and I could have died,” said Bichotte Hermelyn. “All of these issues are around the topics of birthing justice.”
Bichotte Hermelyn convened a panel of doctors, lawyers, advocates, doulas, and leaders immersed in addressing the maternal healthcare crisis at the Brooklyn Law School on December 1. The panel included Assemblymember Chantel Jackson, Councilmember Rita Joseph, and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.
They agreed that there are problems with classism, implicit bias, system racism, and health and prenatal care inequities that feed into the high rates of Black maternal mortality.
The main problem that came up again and again on the panel was that Black women were not listened to during their pregnancy, labor, and birthing process. There’s also a language barrier between medical professionals and the large immigrant population in the city, and a lack of cultural competency overall in the healthcare field, that leads to miscommunication.
“Black women, when they’re in pain, are not listened to,” said Bichotte Hermelyn. “When they need help, they’re not listened to.”
Williams spoke about his wife, India Sneed, and her struggles with cervical cancer and conceiving her second child, as well as facing neglect from doctors.
“Turns out, she had cervical cancer and they didn’t tell us how far it had progressed,” said Williams at the roundtable. “They actually just were not listening to her and she was a very good patient. Anyone who knows my wife knows that she’s going to let it be known what’s happening and what she wants. And they immediately wanted to take her uterus.”
He remembers pushing for a hysterectomy based on the information provided by the doctors at the time. Eventually, they consulted with a Black ob-gyn specialist and decided against the surgery and to having children that way altogether. After their wedding in 2021, she found out that she was “impossibly” pregnant with their daughter.
“My hope is now that we’ve lifted up the cause, we’ll get the money for the doulas and the birthing centers. And we have to let institutions understand their biases, because some of it is not conscious,” said Williams. “I don’t know if the doctors treating my wife understood their biases in immediately trying to take her uterus and what that meant, because without really tackling that issue, it’s going to be really hard. Even when we wrote to the hospital, they dismissed what we were saying and explained it away.”
Jackson, who had two children without complications, spoke to the general fear that most Black women have in a hospital setting without advocates, like a doula, being there for their well being. “Part of that fear is the belief that I don’t have pain, I don’t experience pain, that I’m mistreating my child,” said Jackson.
Joseph also suggested that the changes begin at the curriculum level at medical schools, and medical professionals be trained and retrained about implicit biases.
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member who writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.