Study Finds Racism-Related Stress Makes Childbirth More Risky for Black Mothers

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]A study has revealed an interesting cause and effect. A study has revealed that racism related stress makes child birth riskier for black mothers. Put it up for a mass. Let me give you this research study from the University of Cambridge.

[00:00:24]They have examined how external pressure or external pressures alter a woman's physiology, biology during pregnancy and found that for black women, the body's response to racism acts as a quote biological pathway end quote.

[00:00:53]converting outside stress into actual physical harm.

[00:01:02]We have a lot of information about this to share. Um, but I wanted to to make something very plain and very clear cuz some people are going to uh try to dismiss this study before understanding the cause and effect of the science.

[00:01:18]Um, have you ever become anxious before?

[00:01:22]Have you ever had butterflies in your stomach?

[00:01:25]Has your heart ever fluttered?

[00:01:30]Have you received information and it made you sick to your stomach?

[00:01:36]These are all biological responses based on a neurodynamic happening to you. You are uh cognitively receiving information but you are physically impacted biologically by the information you receive. Very simple mainstream science.

[00:01:57]All right. Researchers review 44 existing studies that examine three physiological pathways associated with worse pregnancy outcomes. This is called a metadata study.

[00:02:13]oxidative stress, inflammation, and utterero placental vascular resistance.

[00:02:22]They found that black women had higher levels of the three metrics.

[00:02:28]Such physiological differences are not the result of genetic differences.

[00:02:37]That's according to the researchers, but rather suggest that socio environmental stressors such as systemic racism and deprivation which are known to have a measure measurable biological effect may influence the body's ability to function healthily during pregnancy.

[00:03:02]Um you would assume that uh in a body that doesn't have another human being growing inside of it um outside factors, social environmental factors will impact that body. If a human being is growing inside of that body, you would imagine that even more so these stressors would impact the body. Um, the study found that ongoing stress can overload the HPA axis, which is the body's stress response system.

[00:03:37]That's according to the Cleveland Clinic. When the HPA axis is disrupted, stress hormones um, such as cortisol are elevated. Over time, this imbalance can lead to vascular changes that reduce blood flow to the placenta and increase the risk of complications such as a rapid rise in blood pressure that can lead to a seizure, stroke, multiple organ failure, and death of the mother and or death to the child. Once again, these are serious cause and effects, but we have not studied the cause, but we have definitely seen the effects. I'm talking about the general body of science and the general body of research. So now there seems to be a significant connection to the environmental element that the mother, black mothers in particular, have to coexist in and how those environmental factors impact the biological reality of the mother and the child.

[00:04:46]Stress also impacts the immune system.

[00:04:49]According to the study, during pregnancy, the mother's immune system changes to help protect the baby.

[00:04:58]But when stress alters the body's inflammation levels, it can lead to the same issue that causes the rapid rise in blood pressure. Also, low birth uh weight and a pre-term birth or premature as it's called in most. Now, here's what we already knew.

[00:05:20]I'll put it up for a mass.

[00:05:26]Black people are more than three times as likely as white. We're talking about black mothers.

[00:05:37]white mothers three times as likely to experience a pregnancy related death. We call it a mortality rate.

[00:05:54]Do you see that figure in front of you?

[00:05:56]Now remember the environmental factors are non-getic.

[00:06:05]medical science or medical professions. They have been echoing these stats for years.

[00:06:15]Some of them have attempted to unravel cause and effect to see how much connects back to the era of the doctor or the doctor not understanding the reality um biologically of the mother.

[00:06:35]But this challenges medical doctors to also understand something and we I I got to just take this all the way back home. There's a reason why black doctors, if you are a black patient with a black doctor, you have a better chance of living longer.

[00:06:54]Why?

[00:06:56]Why would you think? For the most part, many of them are educated uh in the same schools. They have similar training.

[00:07:04]They all pass the same test in order to become licensed. So, why is it that having a black doctor, if you happen to be black, results statistically in you living longer? Because the black doctor likely understands your environmental factors. Why? Because there's an assumption in the data that we don't explore. And that assumption is if you're black and the patient is black, you all share some level of experience, exposure, and environment common. It's called culture and you have a cultural understanding of some of the environmental factors of your patient that maybe a white doctor does not or chooses not to learn.

[00:07:50]Other uh research also shows that black women are at significantly higher risk for severe maternal morbidity including conditions such as preeclampsia which is significantly more common than maternal death.

[00:08:18]Further, AI A black NHPI Asian and Hispanic women have higher rates of admission to intensive care units during delivery compared to white women in general, which is considered a marker. Black women also are nearly twice as likely compared to white women to have birth with late or no prenatal care compared to white women.

[00:08:58]As of 2023, infants born to black women are over twice as likely to die relative to those born to white women. Data also shows that fetal death or still births that is pregnancy loss after 20we gestation are more common among NHPI black and AI women compared to white and Hispanic.

[00:09:32]You have the statistics there.

[00:09:35]Um let's put her up full mass foundation for women uh particularly in the south.

[00:09:41]So, let's talk about the South and and the first time I ever heard of the uh mortality rate and the issue with black women um was from a woman in South Georgia, a woman in Georgia named Judge Hatchet who's a good friend and if you remember she used to have a television judge show and she told me this story that ripped my heart.

[00:10:11]And she was at the hospital witnessing this along with her son.

[00:10:20]And point by point, moment by moment, medical professionals are saying, "Ah, everything's just fine. Oh, no, no, that doesn't mean anything.

[00:10:33]There's a woman pregnant and dying."

[00:10:36]The son had a had an uncction that something was terribly wrong, but the doctors assured him, the nurses assured him, "Oh, no, no, no, no. That's not what that is."

[00:10:48]And then she was dead.

[00:10:51]Yeah.

[00:10:54]In the south, there are uh large groups or large gaps, excuse me, maternal care for black women, which has prompted Jamara Ammani, a midwife and mother herself, to put forth a lawsuit against Georgia over its restrictive midwife laws that put black mothers at further risk. To put this into context, only three birth centers remain in Georgia due to Medicaid cuts, which has created maternity care deserts. Ammani, 45, set out to become a midwife in Georgia, and she and she said that the state's restrictions around the practice forced her to move to Florida in 2008 to pursue her career.

[00:11:35]The state does not allow midwives without a nursing degree to provide care. Those with a nursing degree, certified uh nurse midwives are required to work under the supervision of a physician. Advocates say that Georgia's midwife policies are some of the most restrictive in the country. Now, early two decades later, Mani is suing Georgia over the same regulations that have kept her and others from practice practicing in the Peach State. The lawsuit, which is being led by the Center for Reproductive Rights and includes two other midwives as plaintiffs, was announced last month at the end of the state's legislative session as lawmakers failed to pass House Bill 520. That was a measure that would have largely repealed the restrictions on the industry of being a professional midwife. Advocates argue that the state's restrictive policies not only hinder a capable workforce and reduce access to care for pregnant people across the state, but that the policies also contribute to the growing maternal health crisis. Um, and obviously, uh, it does. It says, quote, "We know from research that 80 to 90% of maternal deaths are preventable and that many of the causes are systemic and the number one cause, especially when it comes to black women, is racism," Ammani said. And similar to the experience that I had in my second birth where a white nurse was telling me as a young black mother that I could kill my baby, the threatening words that were said to me, the stress it put on my body and my baby completely preventable and unnecessary. There you go. A nervous system response uh biological, physiological, you know, some states allow chiropractors to deliver babies. Did you know that when you compare those states to states like Georgia and obviously the chiropractor needs the training to do so, but when you compare the restrictions that are in the state of Georgia to other states that have a more liberal open view with the proper training, compare the mortality rates and you'll have your answer. Restriction does not create a better outcome. Having more trained individuals does.

[00:14:04]All right, Senator thoughts here.

[00:14:07]>> Yeah, a lot to unpack here. We've definitely known this. So, I think it was Cambridge, but whoever this recent study and the studies across the decades, thank God they're doing the study and thank God they got the study in before this administration came in.

[00:14:20]Um, they're telling the black community empirically what we've always known by lived experience. So the data is backing up the lived experience of black people. We could have told you this without a study, but we need to study.

[00:14:35]The two things go hand in hand, quantitative and qualitative. I I I tell you Serena Williams, you may recall, Beyonce, you know, two very wealthy black women, and they told their stories about complications they had in the hospital. So if two women of that economic status just by way of example were not believed about some of their pain, we know over the course of the history of this country, black people have been experimented on without, you know, numbing, you know, any pain relief and those kinds of things. and that in the medical profession, the studies that show some of the biases against black people coming from the medical profession, yes, nurses and doctors and others who we place a lot of faith in.

[00:15:22]Now, we have some extraordinary people in the medical field, however, extraordinary individuals does not take the place of recognizing the systemic again failings. And this study just further proves what black people have been saying for generations that it's not in our head. It's not us. The the pain is being felt in our bodies. And I remember talking to one of my mentors who was a runner and he said to me, he said, you know, Nina, and he's long distance runner. So he used long distance as the example that the body was never designed to be under that kind of stress for a long period of time.

[00:16:02]that stress, you know, we were having this conversation about how stress heals.

[00:16:07]>> And so, even when you're running, you can pace, you can speed up, you can pace, you can speed up, but when you are a black person living in America, you don't have the opportunity to pace.

[00:16:18]You're always in survival mode. It was James Baldwin who once said, "To be black and relatively conscious in America is to be constantly in a rage."

[00:16:30]And so we're seeing from these studies that black bodies are always enraged because of the outside pressures that is put on that body and then that is transferred to the baby. Black mothers worrying all the time I'm about to birth a baby into a world that does not love black people. You know, ice cube, my skin is my sin. I mean, I wish that none of these things were a reality. Nobody wishes that more than black people. But it is a reality. when I was pregnant with my son and his um dad is lighter skinned and we know that there's colorism just as there is antilackness.

[00:17:06]One of my prayers as a black mother other than you know wanting my son and I didn't know it was a boy but other than wanting my child to be healthy doc was that my I didn't want my child to have my complexion.

[00:17:18]Now imagine what kind of stress that puts on somebody other than everything else I'm going for and the re going through and the reason I didn't and I need people to understand this is not because I I don't love my chocolate skin is beautiful you know black women we are the original Eve it was because if I could take one less pressure off of him >> for being a black man in America now again at the time I didn't know it was a boy but That was my rationale. Think about that level of stress.

[00:17:52]>> And think about the fact that no other group, no other group, >> no other group has to have that kind of contemplation.

[00:18:02]No other group has to worry about whether or not their their child's skin is their skin is too dark or their hair is too curly. you know, all the things that black people have to go through based on what God gave us. That's right.

[00:18:20]>> That that's that's some serious stress.

[00:18:22]And people don't think about it. Even black people don't think about it because you know what? We are the ultimate survivors.

[00:18:28]>> Yeah.

[00:18:28]>> But it doesn't make it right. Just because people are surviving through something doesn't mean that that pressure that they're under constantly generationally for black people, it doesn't make it right. So, thank God for these researchers lining up the empirical data that we know instinctively in the black community. Countless stories told, similar stories told. And when you say culture, the shared way of life.

[00:18:57]>> Yeah. the shared way of life of black people tells this story and many others, you know, it tells the story.

[00:19:05]>> That's right. Very well said. And thank you for that honesty, that transparency.

[00:19:10]I know you freed some people with that because the truth is you're not the only one who has had to think about the socioeconomic factors that man has created that would cause your child to possibly experience some ills that you had to overcome. Um, very well said. All right, we'll bring up these hats. They come in that study. I do hope that they do follow-up studies beyond.