For many women, giving birth is one of the most important and memorable days of their lives. Women like Kira Dixon Johnson who passed away hours after bleeding internally following a routine C-section, did not get this reality
Johnson is survived by her husband Chad and two sons.
Johnson is just one of the thousands of Black women who die during or after childbirth each year in the U.S. According to the Center of Disease Control (CDC), Black Women are 2-3 more times more likely to die in pregnancy-related causes than white women while under the care of medical professionals.
Doctors are often learning while they practice. Throughout the many years of training doctors and nurses have, the training is often misguided.
“Providers aren’t trained to listen,” said Dr. Holly Horan, professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alabama, while discussing why Black
women are usually misdiagnosed in the healthcare system. “If you're not paying attention to the symptoms that is a provider-based issue.”
As a doula, Horan is a trained professional who provides physical and emotional support during or after pregnancy. Horan described how Black women are not heard when reporting signs of complications in pregnancy, which can lead to mistrust in their providers.
Amber Issac tweeted about her experiences in April 2020 about not receiving proper treatment while seeing medical professionals at the Montefiore Medical Center in The Bronx, New York. Days after she posted that tweet, she was admitted for an emergency C-Section. As soon as they cut her open, she was pronounced deceased.
Amber was doing only what she was told , trusting her doctors.
“We are either too trusting or not trusting enough,” said Mariah Brown, a Tuscaloosa, Alabama native and a doula since 2019. “Even as a Black physician there is still so much you can do.”
She has always had a concern for Black women being treated in the healthcare system and how the lack of support before and after pregnancy was a huge concern for her as well. She explained how Black people don’t trust the healthcare system due to knowing that they were used as experiments and myths such as “blacks don’t feel pain.”
Many families of black mothers who have passed while giving birth have voiced their opinions on how they could still be alive. Chad Johnson--the widowed husband of his wife Kira, soon realized that the Black maternal mortality rate is a serious issue that is not talked about enough.
Chad has since founded 4Kira4Moms, an advocacy group to educate the public about the impact of maternal mortality in communities. Issac’s family started the Save a Rose Foundation.Its mission is to promote the idea that maternal mortality should be viewed and discussed as a human rights issue.
Issac and Johnson are just two of the thousands of Black women who have lost their lives while giving birth. A famous quote by Malcolm X states: “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman, The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman, The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.” For families suffering because of systemic racism,pushing healthcare professionals to strive toward better treatment for Black women could be one way to prove that quote wrong.