Olympic champion highlights Black maternal mortality following teammate's death

Maternal mortality is a crisis in the United States of America, especially for Black women. No amount of health or education or money seems to be enough to make Black women safe in pregnancy and childbirth. Neither does physical fitness, as Olympic track legend Allyson Felix highlights in a recent piece reacting to the death of her former teammate Tori Bowie.

Bowie anchored the gold medal-winning women’s 4x100 relay team at the 2016 Rio Olympics and won individual silver and bronze medals at the same Olympics. The next year, she won the world championship in the 100 meters. When she died last month, the cause was childbirth complications, according to her autopsy. Bowie died alone at home, apparently while undergoing labor, with respiratory distress and eclampsia contributing to her death.

That hit home for Felix, not just because of the loss of a teammate but because Felix herself underwent an emergency C-section in 2018 after developing preeclampsia. Felix was famous, a college graduate, and wealthy—all factors that should have contributed to getting her high-quality medical care—but as she told Time Magazine:

About five days before I gave birth to Camryn, I was having Thanksgiving dinner with my family. I mentioned that my feet were swollen. As we went around the table, the women shared their experiences during pregnancy. My cousin said she also had swollen feet. My mom didn’t. Not once did someone say, ‘oh, well, that’s one of the indicators of preeclampsia.’ None of us knew. When I became pregnant, my doctor didn’t sit me down and tell me, ‘these are things that you should look for in your pregnancy, because you are at a greater risk to experience these complications.’

Felix was at a greater risk for pregnancy complications and maternal mortality because she is Black. Black women are three times as likely to die due to complications from pregnancy and childbirth as white women, and, “Notably, the pregnancy-related mortality rate for Black women who completed a college education or higher is 5.2 times higher than the rate for White women with the same educational attainment and 1.6 times higher than the rate for White women with less than a high school diploma,” KFF reports. This is a direct outcome of systemic racism, including in the medical care they receive.

Felix and Bowie aren’t the only elite athletes to have suffered life-threatening or fatal pregnancy complications. Tennis legend Serena Williams had to save her own life when she had a pulmonary embolism following childbirth and her medical team didn’t immediately understand the seriousness of the situation or the treatment she needed. Felix cites one more case, that of another of her and Bowie’s 2016 relay teammates:

Three gold medalists from that 4 x 100 relay team in Rio set out to become mothers. All three of us—all Black women—had serious complications. Tianna Madison has shared that she went into labor at 26 weeks and entered the hospital “with my medical advance directive AND my will.” Tori passed away. We’re dealing with a Black Maternal Health crisis. Here you have three Olympic champions, and we’re still at risk.

Democrats have proposed a package of legislation to address Black maternal mortality, Felix notes. Sen. Cory Booker and Reps. Lauren Underwood and Alma Adams have introduced the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act, a package of 13 bills that would, among other things, address social determinants of health, extend WIC eligibility for new mothers, improve data collection and review, boost funding for community-based organizations working on the issue, and offer support to targeted populations like veterans, people with substance abuse disorders or mental illness, and incarcerated women.

In a statement accompanying the bill, Adams notes, “Maternal mortality and morbidity rates in the United States are unacceptable, and far higher than in other wealthy countries,” adding that “As many as 80% of maternal deaths are preventable with proper care and treatment.” It’s time for the United States to get serious about preventing those deaths.