UN knocks US for Black maternal mortality

The United Nations condemned the United States after a new report found that pregnant Black women and girls face a systemic and historical pattern of racist abuse in the health sector. 

The report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) found that Afrodescendent women are abused and neglected due to systemic racism and sexism in the health care system across both South and North America, with the U.S. having the largest discrepancy in maternal death rates despite being the richest.  

"The scourge of racism continues for Black women and girls in the Americas, many of whom are descendants of the victims of enslavement,” Dr. Natalia Kanem, UNFPA executive director, said in a statement. 

The report debunks common myths that Black women suffer worse maternal health outcomes because they fail to seek treatment in a timely manner, engage in poor lifestyle choices and have hereditary predispositions. 

According to the U.N., disproportionate levels of mistreatment stem from unscientific and slavery-era beliefs still present in the medical system. 

The report specifically highlighted that there remains deep connections between the field of gynecology and racism, including the fact that surgical techniques like caesarean sections were created through experimentation on enslaved African women who were said not to "feel pain in the same way as whites.”

The idea that Black women don’t feel pain in the same manner continues in today’s medical education, according to the report. Medical students and physicians have reported that "Black people's nerve endings are less sensitive than white people's nerve endings."

But the report also added that these biases appear in medical textbooks in different manners. For instance, childbirth is modeled on pelvic morphology more common in white women. Differing pelvic presentations are considered abnormal or high risk. As a result, when a Black birthing person reports pain, it is often minimized or overlooked. 

In the United States, Black women and girls are three times more likely to die while giving birth or within six weeks of giving birth compared to white women. 

Even those who have a higher income or level of education face higher rates of mortality. Deaths among pregnant Black American college graduates is 1.6 times higher than white women with less than a high school diploma, the U.N. reported. 

Members of Congress have tried to address the maternal health crisis through a package of legislation dubbed the “Momnibus.” 

The Black Maternal Health Caucus, established in 2019, is behind the package meant to address the racial disparities that exist for pregnant Black people. The Momnibus includes calls for recognizing the social determinants of health, funding for community-based organizations, and diversifying the perinatal workforce, but most of the 12-package act hasn’t passed.

In June, a collaboration of more than 30 Black-led organizations created a guide for policymakers to apply a reproductive justice framework to formulate policy that centers and improves outcomes for Black women, girls and gender-expansive people.

The U.N. is now calling for governments across the Americas to collect data broken down by race and ethnicity and for medical schools to reevaluate curricula that perpetuates racist ideology. 

“Too often, Afrodescendent women and girls are abused and mistreated, their needs are not taken seriously, and their families are shattered by the preventable death of a loved one during childbirth,” Kanem said. “Justice and equality will only be possible when our healthcare systems see these women and provide them with respectful, compassionate care."