March, 15 2010, 03:14pm EDT
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Racial Discrimination and Economic Obstacles Contribute to Dramatically Elevated Maternal Death Rates for Women of Color in the United States, Says a New Amnesty International Report
African-American women are four times more likely than white women to die from childbirth-related complications.
WASHINGTON
A new report from Amnesty International reveals that
African-American women are nearly four times more likely to die of
pregnancy-related complications than white women. In high-risk
pregnancies, the disparities are even greater; African-American women are five
and a half times more likely to die than white women.
The report, Deadly
Delivery: the Maternal Health Care Crisis in the USA, faults
discrimination, a lack of nationally enforced standards and barriers to
adequate maternal care as contributing to the high death rate among women of
color giving birth. Women living in poverty and those who speak little or no
English face additional barriers to quality maternal care, resulting in missed
opportunities to save women's lives and reduce complications.
Inamarie Stith-Rouse, 33, who was African-American,
died in a Boston hospital after delivering a healthy baby girl
following an emergency c-section. Her husband Andre said he tried telling staff
that his wife was in distress and struggling to breathe after surgery, but he
said he was told it was "no big deal" and the couple was "too
emotional." Hours went by before appropriate tests showed she was
hemorrhaging. It was too late. Inamarie went into a coma and died four
days later. Andre Rouse felt race played a part in the hospital staff's immediate
lack of response.
Two to three women die every day in the United States from pregnancy-related
complications, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and half of these
deaths are preventable.
More than 34,000 women nearly die
each year due to flaws and shocking disparities in maternal health care. These
severe pregnancy-related complications that nearly cause death have increased
by 25 percent since 1998.
Authorities concede that haphazard reporting means maternal death statistics
could be twice as high as officially reported.
"This country's extraordinary record of medical
advancement makes its haphazard approach to maternal care all the more
scandalous and disgraceful," said Larry Cox, executive director of
Amnesty International USA. "Women should not die in the richest country on earth from preventable
complications and emergencies."
Maternity care advocates and practitioners confirm the
findings in AI's report. "In the 20 years I've been in this country,
the racial disparity has not improved. I cannot comprehend how such a stark
racial disparity could even exist in a country like this," said Jennie
Joseph, a U.K.-trained midwife who founded the Easy Access Prenatal Care
Clinic, an outreach maternity clinic in West Orlando, FL; the outreach clinic
clientele is 50 to 60% African American.
The report
includes these key findings:
-
l Women of color account for 32
percent of all women in the United States but more than half (51 percent) of uninsured women;
this means they are more likely to go into pregnancy with less than optimum
health or untreated medical problems. (State data available.) -
l Women who do not receive any
prenatal care are three to four times more likely to die than women who do.
African-American and Latina
women are two and a half times and Native American women are three and a half
times more likely than white women to receive late or no prenatal care. (State
data available.) -
Burdensome
bureaucratic procedures in Medicaid enrollment delay access to prenatal
care. Twenty-one states do not currently allow pregnant women to
temporarily access medical care while their permanent application for Medicaid
is pending. -
l In rural areas and inner cities
there is a critical shortage of health care professionals. In 2008, 64 million
people were living in "shortage areas" for primary care, but
federally-supported community health centers-a critical safety
net-were available in only 20 percent of these areas. (State data available.) -
Caesarian sections make up nearly
one-third of all deliveries in the United States-twice as high as recommended by the World Health
Organization. African American women have the highest c-section rate of any
group. The risk of death following c-sections is more than three times higher
than for vaginal births.
Comprehensive, Consistent Approach Needed
to Maternal Care
The Amnesty International report calls for a coordinated,
comprehensive and consistent approach to maternal care, from family planning to
post-partum care, to fix a system that is failing so many women.
Because there is no systematic, robust government response
to this critical problem, Amnesty International is urging the government to
establish a single office within the Department of Health and Human Services
responsible for ensuring that all women receive quality maternal care.
Other recommendations include:
-
l An increase in support for
federally qualified health centers by 2011 to expand the number of women who
can access affordable maternal health care -
l Vigorous enforcement of federal
non-discrimination laws -
l Ensure access to timely prenatal
care for all women -
l Encouraging home care visits during the first weeks
following birth -
l Protocols to prevent and respond to the leading
complications that cause pregnancy-related death
Respect for human rights requires the recognition that everyone
has the right to live in dignity, and the right to food, shelter, water, basic
health care and education. For more information about Amnesty International's
"Demand Dignity" campaign, please visit: https://www.amnestyusa.org/demand-dignity/
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
(212) 807-8400LATEST NEWS
US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
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Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
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"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
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"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
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Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that campaigners linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
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"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
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Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
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NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
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Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
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Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
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In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
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