In much of the developed world, dying while pregnant or delivering a child is practically unknown. In Australia, for example, there were just in 2021. Health Brief is a coproduction of The Washington Post and KFF Health News.
But that’s not the case in the American South. And especially not for Black women. In South Carolina, Black women were more than four times as likely to die of a pregnancy-related cause in 2020 than White women.
And discrimination was a factor in more than a third of the state’s 18 pregnancy-related deaths of women of all races, by the state’s . Discrimination was the most common circumstance associated with South Carolina maternal deaths from 2018 to 2020, the report found, topping obesity, substance use disorders and mental health conditions. It’s a problem across the South.
Arkansas had the highest maternal mortality rate in the United States from 2018 to 2021, according to — deaths per live births, about four times the rate in California. Mississippi had the second-highest rate: deaths per live births. The top eight states are all below the Mason-Dixon Line.
South Carolina’s overall pregnancy-related mortality rate dropped by from 2019 to 2020, but improvement was observed only among White patients. The pregnancy-related mortality rate among Black women increased year over year, and the gap in pregnancy-related deaths between Black and White people widened, according to the state’s report. A spokesperson for South Carolina Gov.
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