Why do so many Black women die in pregnancy? One reason: Doctors don't take them seriously

The nation’s health disparities have had a tragic impact: Over the past two decades, the higher mortality rate among Black Americans resulted in 1.6 million excess deaths compared to white Americans. That higher mortality rate resulted in a cumulative loss of more than 80 million years of life due to people dying young and billions of dollars in health care and lost opportunity.

For decades, frustrated birth advocates and medical professionals have tried to sound an alarm about the ways medicine has failed Black women. Historians trace that maltreatment to racist medical practices that Black people endured amid and after slavery.

The disparities between Black and white babies is stark: The infant mortality rate in 2021 for white mothers was 5.8, while the infant mortality rate for Black mothers was 12.1, an increase from 10.9 from the prior year.

Black babies account for just 29% of births in Alabama, yet nearly 47% of infant deaths.

A 2020 report by the Alabama Maternal Mortality Review Committee found that more than 55% of 80 pregnancy-related deaths that they reviewed in 2016 and 2017 could have been prevented.