PHOTOGRAPHS BY KAREN KASMAUSKI
STORY BY LOUIS HANSEN
THE VIRGINIA CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM AT WHRO
Midwife Victoria Buchanan hears a common refrain from pregnant Black women in her care:
“Oh, I just don’t want to die,” Buchanan said they tell her. “I just want to come out of here alive. I want to have a healthy baby. I want to be next to my kids.”
Buchanan, 28, believes that she and the team at Sentara Midwifery Specialists in Hampton, Va., can keep new mothers and their babies healthy and defy the bleak statistics linked to Black pregnancies. Research shows that Black women in the United States are three times more likely to suffer a pregnancy-related death than white women. In Virginia, Black women in recent years have been more than twice as likely as other mothers to have a death attributed to childbirth.
The national crisis for Black maternal health came into even sharper focus recently with a pair of high-profile cases. Tori Bowie, a world-champion sprinter and Olympic gold medalist, died in May from childbirth complications. Bowie, eight months pregnant and in labor at the time of her death, was found lifeless in her home, alone. She was 32.
And tennis legend Serena Williams has shared how she struggled to get medical professionals to take her seriously when she suffered serious health complications after giving birth.
Both cases highlight the risks that Black women — even those with celebrity, accomplishment and wealth — face during childbirth. And study after study back uptheir stories.
Health experts say the country should be doing much more to improve maternal health and reach levels equal to other developed nations. More than 8 in 10 pregnancy-related deaths in the United States could have been prevented, according to research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
