The doctor looked at me with visible disgust. He raised his voice and told me my baby would be “too small,” as though my young Black body had already failed to meet his expectations before I had even begun to deliver. That was 42 years ago, and I still remember every detail of that hospital room—the dim lighting, the blood pooling on the floor beneath me, the silence where a caring hand should have been.
Eight months earlier, I had learned I was pregnant during a physical exam while trying to enlist in the U.S. Navy. I was a college freshman with dreams of service, and instead I found myself navigating a healthcare system that seemed predetermined to see me as less than. When I told the medical staff something was wrong, my concerns were dismissed. I was left alone in a barren room while my labor progressed. My husband walked in and later described what he saw as resembling “a murder scene.”
Two days later, I delivered a healthy baby girl who weighed almost eight pounds. I left the hospital in severe physical pain, and it was only later that I learned I had an undiagnosed broken coccyx—an injury that went unnoticed because my symptoms and complaints had never been taken seriously.
Here’s what angers me most all these years later: my story isn’t a relic of a less enlightened time.
The Numbers Haven’t Changed
Just last week, the White House announced its action plan to address maternal health. The website moms.gov promises “resources, information, and help for new and expecting mothers.” But scroll through it and you’ll find no mention of the mortality crisis faced by Black women like me. No acknowledgment that we are more than three times as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes as white women—our risk remains stubbornly, shamefully higher than any other racial group.
When Rep. Summer Lee pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on how anti-DEI policies could set back critical research into Black maternal mortality, his response was the same deflection we see too often: a broad “everybody is included” blanket instead of directly addressing how his department would specifically protect Black women who remain at greater risk.
This isn’t about politics. It’s about survival.
High-profile cases like Serena Williams sharing her life-threatening complications after staff dismissed her concerns have drawn attention to this crisis. We saw Kashena Manuel film her daughter Kiara being dismissed by hospital staff in Texas minutes before giving birth. We learned of Janell Green Smith, a nurse-midwife dedicated to maternal health, who died less than a week after giving birth. These women had platforms. Their stories made headlines. But for every Serena Williams, there are thousands of Black women whose experiences never make the news—women whose pain is shrugged off, whose symptoms are minimized, whose fears are treated as overdramatic.
The Fear That Travels Through Generations
What troubles me most, and what gets discussed far less often, is that these experiences don’t end with one generation.
My eldest daughter—the child I nearly lost my life bringing into the world—is now an adult. When it came time for her to give birth, she made a choice that still aches for me to think about. She chose to have both of her children at home, with a doula’s support. Her decision wasn’t driven by preference or ideology. It was rooted in fear that a hospital would not listen to her, would not protect her.
My youngest daughter could have died after childbirth when she developed a spinal headache caused by an epidural puncture that was overlooked. She was sent home from the hospital and later fainted at home before being rushed back to the emergency room.
Now, as another daughter hopes to become pregnant soon, I find myself carrying that fear forward. I worry about her safety in a biased system that continues to produce unequal outcomes. At times, I have even wished she could give birth in another country, where the risks are lower. That’s not hyperbole—that’s what decades of being ignored will do to a mother’s heart.
The Legislation Exists—But Is It Enough?
Some will argue that hospitals are safe places, that incidents like mine are rare, that progress has been made. But laws such as the WELLS Act—named after a Black mother who was repeatedly refused care—and the Momnibus Act, a package of bills designed to address maternal health disparities, exist precisely because hospitals have not consistently protected Black mothers. Legislation matters, but it cannot erase human bias or the lived fear that many Black women carry into childbirth.
We can pass all the bills we want. We can launch all the government websites with hopeful messaging. But until the fundamental question changes—from “what’s wrong with this Black woman’s body?” to “why aren’t we listening?”—nothing will actually shift.
No mother intends to pass her fears down to her daughters. Yet for many Black moms, the fear of maternal mortality isn’t a superstition or an anxiety disorder. It’s grounded in real life and supported by data that cannot be ignored. My hope is that future generations will inherit something different: a healthcare system that, without question, listens, responds, and values Black women’s lives and their infants’ lives.
Until then, we keep telling our stories. We keep refusing to be silent. And we keep praying our daughters come home.
