'Black women have been screaming into the void for years.' Mothers are dying unnecessarily.

Danielle P. Tong is executive director of CelebrateOne.

Former Kansas City Chiefs cheerleader Krystal Anderson died March 20 after giving birth to her daughter, Charlotte Willow, who was stillborn.

This, yet again, brings Black maternal health and Black maternal mortality back into public discourse.

This conversation was already percolating under the surface after notable close calls in the birthing stories of Beyonce Knowles Carter and Serena Williams.

It is something I know personally.

At 29 weeks gestation, my uterus spontaneously ruptured, resulting in serious hemorrhage, a hysterectomy, and the delivery of a premature child.

Black women and birthing people die at four times the rate of white women and birthing people, and Black women have been screaming into the void for years.

That is why an article published March 12 by the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology was so concerning.

The peer-reviewed article proposed that the United States high and rising maternal mortality rates might be inflated due to irregularities in data collection methods.

The moment the article was published major media outlets amplified this message as though it were a verified fact.

The study was subsequently denounced in a statement by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology due to concerns over study design and more. However, the study’s most egregious crime is the cavalier treatment of the widening racial disparity between Black and white mothers and birthing parents.

This gap persisted even when researchers used their adjusted calculations. The treatment of Black women’s maternal mortality crisis as a secondary issue undermines the emotional and intellectual labor that Black women have engaged in and it exacerbates the longstanding notion that Black women's experiences are not being listened to or believed. 

Racism and bias played out before my own eyes

I work in this space professionally, as the executive director of CelebrateOne, but I am here as a Black mother with my own story of birth trauma.

My time in the hospital and NICU during my last pregnancy was a confusing third-person experience of watching racism and bias play out before my eyes and watching my privilege of proximity to the language and culture of healthcare save my life where it would most definitely have failed others.

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That is not a privilege that anyone should require for survival. This article and its ambiguous representation among general media are dangerous. They threaten to undermine the very real systemic interventions necessary to save lives.

An article written by Arline Geronimus of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health says it best, “Put simply, for Black women far more than for white women, giving birth can amount to a death sentence...” Black women know this.

We feel this in our bodies and we carry this burden into our pregnancies and postpartum care.

And we deserve better from our research community than to have the crisis that threatens our lives disregarded as a secondary thought. A crisis for Black women and birthing people is a crisis for everyone in the communities where we live, breathe, raise our families, and greatly contribute.

Use your power to save Black women and children

During Black Maternal Health Week, and in a mission-critical election year, I would like to provide the reminder that Black women and the people who love them are watching and we are voting.

We are working to save our own lives and the lives of our greater community, and we’re doing it at the polls. If you are a Black woman, you love a Black woman, you know a Black woman, and you respect Black women, this is your sign to use your power at the polls. If you need help with how to get registered, contact your state rep, or with any part of using your voting power, connect with CelebrateOne for our advocacy toolkit.

Danielle P. Tong is executive director of CelebrateOne. The organization stewards the Franklin County's strategic plan to reduce the infant mortality rate by 2030.