FRONTLINE goes inside the fight over abortion, told through the stories of women struggling with unplanned pregnancies.
Tag: health disparities
🎧 Economic Ripples: Hospital Closure Hurts A Town’s Ability To Attract Retirees | NPR
When a rural community loses its hospital, health care becomes harder to come by in an instant. But a hospital closure also shocks a small town's economy. It shuts down one of its largest employers. It scares off heavy industry that needs an emergency room nearby. And in one Tennessee town, a lost hospital means lost hope of attracting more retirees.
Here’s a great example of why pure capitalist competition doesn’t work in areas like health care and education in large swathes of America. Small communities like this one often have only one option of a hospital to go to, and often they don’t even have that. And many health care issues don’t allow for direct competition and choice because they are emergent and one can only go to the closest provider with their fingers crossed.
📑 Read Write Respond #037 | Read Write Collect | Aaron Davis
Aaron Davis (Read Write Collect)This a harrowing story made even sadder by the grim reality of the statistics. ❧
I’m almost losing count of how many racial health disparity stories I’ve been seeing lately. It’s so common I’ve got tags for it on my site now.
https://boffosocko.com/2019/01/09/i-was-pregnant-and-in-crisis-all-the-doctors-and-nurses-saw-was-an-incompetent-black-woman-time/
👓 Stress From Racism May Be Causing African-American Babies To Die More Often | NPR
African-American women are more likely to lose a baby in the first year of life than women of any other race. Scientists think that stress from racism makes their bodies and babies more vulnerable.
👓 I Was Pregnant and in Crisis. All the Doctors and Nurses Saw Was an Incompetent Black Woman | Time
At every step of a fairly typical pregnancy for a black woman in the U.S., I was rendered an incompetent subject with exceptional needs.
I just don’t have words.
If you’re feeling depressed and angry though, I invite you to continue on with some stories I can’t help but collect:
🎧 ‘The Daily’: A Life-or-Death Crisis for Black Mothers | New York TImes
Black mothers and infants in the United States are far more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts. The disparity is tied intrinsically to the lived experience of being a black woman in America.
On today’s episode:
- Linda Villarosa, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.
- Simone Landrum, a young mother in New Orleans.
Background reading:
- Black women in the United States are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes as white women, and black infants are more than twice as likely to die as white babies. A growing body of research links this disparity to the toxic psychological stress experienced as a result of systemic racism.
The story in this episode is a superb and emotional follow-on of an excellent NPR/ProPublica story I read back in December. We need more stories like this.
I nearly had a panic attack while listening to this. The disparities in parts of America are so painful and distressing and we can, could, and should be doing more to improve them.
👓 Black Mothers Keep Dying After Giving Birth. Shalon Irving’s Story Explains Why | NRP
Black women are three times more likely to die from complications of childbirth than white women in the U.S. Racism, and the stress it causes, can play a leading role in that disparity.
What a painful story…