Some doctors, some nurses don't want you to ask any questions.
Our grandparents didn't really want to go to the doctor because they never trusted the doctor.
So then that got passed on to us.
I felt like your biases is why my son is not here.
Across the country, many black women are trying to realize the American dream, having a family.
The problem is, far too many of them are going into the hospital and not making it back out.
Income, prior health issues, genetics,
none of it explains the disparity black women face.
The one thing that could is something this country has struggled with for centuries.
Do you feel racism plays a role in the care that black women are receiving?
I do.
I really do.
Meet Charles Johnson.
He’s a super dad.
Can you say hi?
Hi.
Can I shake your hand?
How are you?
Good.
Nice to meet you.
A single father, he’s raising two boys on his own.
But it’s not how he wanted it to be.
I married a woman that was far smarter than me, that really challenged me to be a better
person in every aspect of my life.
And I depended on her for so much.
Charles and his wife Kira had a whole life planned together.
We always talked about raising men that would change the world.
That's what we thought of, and everything that we talked about
was focused and centered around that.
Two years ago, everything changed when they went to the hospital for the birth of their second son.
She said, "Don't leave the hospital without me."
And that was her way of saying--
Don't leave the hospital without--
Don't leave without…
I don’t leave until we leave together.
The thought that I would walk into that hospital and not be able to keep my promise, for me
it was just this feeling that I just let her down in the worst possible way ever.
What was supposed to be a routine C-section went terribly wrong.
Kira was bleeding internally.
Charles alleges no one took appropriate action.
Throughout the day, throughout me watching my wife's condition deteriorate, at no point
did the doctor or the medical staff's sense of urgency heighten for my wife.
Ultimately, Kira died after being taken into surgery.
For them to fail to value her in that manner to this length
is something that I really, even to this day almost three years later, have a very tough
time getting my mind around.
It's a pattern of lack of compassion, lack of transparency, and then failing to act.
Her energy is definitely in that place.
You could see that her kids have her spirit.
Hearing about their love story and their plans for their family, it's infuriating because
I think her death was completely preventable.
I don't know.
It just feels really wrong.
The terrifying thing is, Kira’s story could be mine.
A woman who’s educated, in love, financially stable, and black.
You may or may not know, but black mothers are three times more likely to die than white
mothers of delivery complications.
And black infants are twice as likely to die during infancy than white babies.
Researchers hypothesize that
poor birth outcomes among black families could be linked to income, prior health issues, or genetics.
But what a growing body of research shows is far more disheartening.
Black women have said that they have told their doctors that they were in pain, that
they were uncomfortable, that something was wrong, and that they weren’t listened to.
I think that there's a lot of unconscious bias that sort of sets up a situation where
you hear what you think you hear.
You know, “Oh, she's always complaining of pain,” or these preconceived notions
that actually work against the patient.
Racial bias, or racism, making assumptions about the person in front of you based on
stereotypes, sometimes without even realizing it.
It might be hard for some to imagine, but if we need proof of how racism has affected
the perception of black pain, we don't have to look very far.
There's been a long tradition, going back at least as far as the United States was founded,
of white physicians treating black patients
like they are subhuman, that they do not feel pain like white people.
And particularly, the tradition that happens time and time again of a black population
being isolated and treated like lab animals.
One of the most infamous instances of white physicians experimenting on enslaved women
is Dr. Marion Sims, who began in the 1830s.
Having access to enslaved women, he was very interested in a series of gynecological diseases
and abnormalities that he then used surgery, without any anesthetic, to try to repair.
There was no anesthetic?
No anesthetics.
The father of gynecology.
He used black women to learn.
These were actually slaves who were being violated.
Using the black body as a source of experimentation isn't limited to Dr. Sims.
From the infamous Tuskegee Study, a secret experiment on untreated syphilis in black men,
to what become known as the Mississippi Appendectomy,
in which black women were sterilized without consent.
The black American experience has too often been a painful one.
I don't think our medical industry is any more racist than our country.
Our country has had a very complicated history of how we've treated black people.
It’s an issue that few people like to admit still exists, but the consequences of which
are bigger than I could’ve imagined.
I think the other thing that is important to sort of bring into the conversation is
that maternal mortality is actually the tip of the iceberg.
Thirty-five-year-old Roxie is pregnant for the second time.
It was just last year that her first pregnancy ended with complications.
I could tell that something was going on that day
because I just woke up feeling weird, and not even feeling weird physically.
It was just like something in me could just tell that this day was just not going to be right.
My water breaks, and it was like a gush.
I was trying to tell myself that this is not what's happening because it was so early.
Roxie and her husband went to the emergency room hoping for the best.
When I went for the ultrasound, that's when they discovered that he had no heartbeat.
The doctor comes in,
and he's just like, “I'm so sorry.
There's no heartbeat.”
And, you know, we were just devastated.
At 17 weeks Roxie delivered her son, Lee.
And he was perfect, honestly.
He was just a tiny little baby.
He had ten fingers, ten toes.
You know, he had a little cute nose and mouth, and his eyes were closed, of course.
And they hadn't developed yet.
But he was perfect.
He was like a little baby.
The sad reality is Roxie isn’t alone.
I didn’t think that I would lose two babies and almost lose my life.
All of these women have lost babies, some more than one.
And the truth is, it feels like just another thing black women have to deal with.
When it comes to just how you show up in the world, we all are battling these stereotypes
that are already laid out for us, whether it's the mammy, the Jezebel, strong black
woman, angry black woman, whatever you want to call it.
But I think that plays a role in how we get pregnant, stay pregnant, bring a baby home.
Absolutely.
I mean, I love what you said.
We carry it, we carry it.
We carry it on our shoulders, we carry in our gut.
Black women tend to hold things inside, and anytime you’re holding in anger, fear, grief,
all of these emotions, different things just begin to develop because of
stress that hasn't been dealt with.
Researchers are starting to see what these woman already know.
There’s been data that suggests lifelong stress or generations of stress has been associated
with increased risk for preterm labor and preterm birth.
But I think the data would suggest that racism is a long-term stress, which can lead to poor
health outcomes.
Stress looks a lot like regular pains.
My chest is tight,
something in my chest hurts.
And only to find out from your doctor you’re perfectly healthy.
So where are these pains coming from?
Where are these migraines coming from?
You’re like, “Oh crap.
I can’t get pregnant because I have all this other stuff going on.”
But it’s a combination of all these other outside stressors that are playing a role
into our diet, our living.
And I think that that definitely is why black women have higher rates of infertility,
and then of course why the infant and mortality rates are the way they are today.
In the early days of her pregnancy, Roxie had been healthy and happy.
But midway through her second trimester, a lesson about freedom of speech among black
football players taught at her mostly white school sparked a controversy that made the news.
It got to the point that I started receiving emails saying that I needed to get fired.
Then it started getting to the school, where the school was receiving death threats.
Just when I think, "Oh, this is about to go away,"
something else would happen.
I'm pretty sure a huge part of it had to do with the fact that I'm black.
It’s nearly impossible to say for sure.
Was it racism?
But it’s a question that black women often have to confront in our most devastating moments.
I do believe that there have been certain instances where I may not have received the
best medical care because I am a black woman.
When you give birth, you're supposed to deliver the placenta within 30 minutes or so.
I had this white male doctor who was on call at the time.
He was saying that the placenta was not detaching.
And it wasn't until the next doctor came on call, and she pressed on my stomach a few
times and delivered it quickly.
If all she had to do is push on my stomach a few times to get it out, then why couldn't
he have done the same?
Did he not want to touch me?
I don't know.
I can remember being in the NICU with Makai.
I wasn’t allowed to hold him.
There are other premature babies in here being held.
Why not him?
I’m asking them questions about it.
Then, that’s when I got the attitude like I’m bothering them, you know?
They did exactly what I was always scared of, so they ignored me.
He ended up missing so many signs.
Your concerns are like, hurry up, get this.
And so it is frustrating.
The simple act of questioning your own experience is difficult to navigate.
And these exact concerns have led black women to create a community, a safe space,
so that we don’t have to worry about whether or not we’ve been given adequate care.
I left that hospital, and I became my own advocate.
It took, you know, three times of this for me to actually stand up for myself.
Now that all of us share our stories with loss and fertility but also experiences in
the doctor's office, in the OBGYN office, in the hospitals that they go to, to tell
people to not go to those places,
to go find a different provider that could take care of you so that you can feel secure.
What should the medical industry be doing to address this problem?
When I had my third and final child, I felt like a needed a doula,
and I didn’t get that.
That was what being a midwife was about.
It was a community service, and it was a family commitment.
It passed from generation to generation.
It was black women helping black women.
And over years that black midwives serve in that capacity, many of them will help birth
hundreds of children.
So black women helping each other and by extent helping the community.
Helping the community.
Black women will make a way out of no way.
That is powerful.
That exhibit on black midwives just blew me away because black women will come together
and solve a problem no matter what it is.
It was such a reflection of who black women have always been, of just creating this community
in order to maintain our own well-being, our children's well-being, our community's well-being.
I thought that was incredible.
With a doula by her side, it's the kind of tradition that Roxie is living every day.
So with this pregnancy, it is a high-risk pregnancy.
Not only because I suffered a loss but because of my age also.
Now, here I am at 36 weeks.
Still not quite there.
You still have those feelings like maybe I just can't have a baby.
There's still fear there that anything can happen.
It won't be until I'm literally holding her in my arms and she's crying and she's moving
that I’ll really know that it's real and that she's safe and healthy and happy.
We are on the way to the hospital.
We are actually having her today.
We are definitely excited.
I'm definitely scared because she is measuring a little small.
With her baby measuring in at a low birth weight, Roxie had to deliver early.
But ultimately, her daughter Ever was born healthy and strong.
I'm here in Atlanta, in good ol’ Atlanta traffic, headed to see Roxie who just
had a baby girl, Ever.
And I'm so excited to meet the little baby.
I can't wait.
Hi.
Hello.
How are you?
Come on in.
Oh my gosh.
It was so wonderful to see her and her beautiful baby girl, Ever.
It's really nice to see, even in the face of so much adversity and such disheartening statistics,
that there are black women out here who are having beautiful babies and raising beautiful families.
It was really encouraging to see her,
especially after her loss.
And just hearing her say that she didn't let that get her down, and she was willing to
keep trying 'cause she knew she wanted to be a mother.
That just really warmed my heart.
What would you say to anybody who says that this problem is unsolvable?
This problem is solvable.
And we know that because we've seen progress in other countries.
We've seen progress in states that have implemented programs.
So we have the fixes, we have the tools.
It's about raising the consciousness
first and foremost and letting people know that this is a problem.
I think black people have been working around the system since we've been in this country,
and I think the answer is challenging our country to just get better.
Do a better job of seeing us.
I want to encourage black women to make this country see us.
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