Doctors Are to Black Women What Police Are to Black Men

We have spent years—decades—naming the violence Black men experience at the hands of policing in America. We have marched, documented, recorded, and buried our dead. We have forced the world to watch.

But there is another system of violence that has operated just as quietly, just as consistently, and just as lethally.

And this time, it is happening in hospitals.

To Black women.

Let me be clear: the same way Black men enter encounters with police knowing it could cost them their lives, Black women enter healthcare systems—especially during pregnancy and childbirth—carrying a risk that should never exist in a developed nation.

Black women in the United States are nearly three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). In some places, that number rises to four to five times more likely. And over 80% of these deaths are preventable.

And if you think Massachusetts is immune—think again.