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Kamala Harris sat down with Birth Detroit to support proud friendship bracelet-wearing Abdul El-Sayed and to talk about maternal care, abortion, reproductive health, racism and DEI. El-Sayed didn't have much to say during the roundtable, but Harris and the health care providers spoke mostly about how racism is a key factor in black maternal mortality.
"The attack on DEI is an attack on maternal care," said Harris. "An attack on DEI, to recognize diversity, equity, and inclusion is an attack by definition on maternal care, including the need to protect black women in connection with their pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care."
"These are the facts," she went on, "when we talk about what is at stake in this moment as it relates to these midterms and who occupies a seat in one of the most important bodies in our nation, if not the world, which is the United States Senate."
The idea is that DEI is necessary to ensure that more black people are able to get into college pre-med programs and go on to medical school so they can become doctors who serve the black community and that their being black, in and of itself, will provide them with the extra experience, ability, etc. to prevent black moms from dying in childbirth.
The only problem is that there's no evidence at all that a doctor's race is a factor in their ability to properly care for their patients. Those who do not get the benefit of DEI in order to gain access to medical school do additional, post-college training in order to gain the knowledge needed in order to pursue those programs. That extra education then provides them a greater ability to pass the medical school entrance exams.
By Harris' metric, a person's dark skin color should give them that advantage of access and a person's dark skin color automatically gives them a greater understanding of health care for black moms.
When asked what is needed to prevent black maternal deaths, Dr. D'Angela Pitts gave a laundry list of causes before saying that racism was the top concern for black moms who die in childbirth.
"I always say that a maternal health crisis is a public health crisis," Pitts began, to affirmative responses from those gathered. "So we can't fix everything in the hospitals and the clinics. We have to have every entity to help us, and you have your medical causes. We know that cardiac disease, preeclampsia, is the number one cause, especially in black women. The only preventative that we have is baby aspirin, and that prevents preeclampsia by about 40%. That is not 100%.
"Ideally, preconception. If we come into pregnancy a little bit healthier, but in order for us to come into pregnancy healthier, we have to have insurance. We have to have access. We have to have better groceries, access to grocery stores, exercising, transportation, things like that. The other thing is mental health. As we look at our maternal mortality, 78% of it is preventable.
"If we have 500 deaths in a year, which pregnancy, childbirth should be joyous, we should not be having any deaths. Out of those 78, they're preventable. So if we have 500, that's over 300 people that should still be here. They should be celebrating that first birthday with a huge celebration because it's not only the baby have lived for one year; the mom is here for one year.
"So with mental health, you have everyone at the delivery. No one's there afterwards. Moms are suffering. That village is not there. We don't have our support with our doulas, our community health workers, our home health services. So we also need that as well.
"Substance use is also increasing. I love that we have Narcan available, we have to eliminate the stigma. We have to eliminate the stigma, and every patient should have access to Narcan, and the family should have access to Narcan because that's a preventable death. And then postpartum hemorrhage. You can bleed out your uterus can bleed out within 10 minutes. We should have blood in the hospital. Access to blood, if available. So those are some of the things that are preventable.
"And sorry, racism," she said finally, noting that this was the number one cause of maternal mortality. If Harris and Pitts are to be believed, racism is the reason for everything sad that befalls black moms. In the end, the root causes of black mortality as far as the roundtable is concerned are racist white people.
Libby