Harris highlights pregnancy difficulties facing Black women

WASHINGTON (AP) — One Black mother said she nearly died after her son was born following an earlier miscarriage and a stillbirth. Another Black mother said that she wasn't told about the dangers of her particular pregnancy complication in women like herself and that it led to the loss of her baby just before her delivery date. A third Black woman who is caring for her grandson spoke through her tears about unexpectedly losing her daughter after the baby was born.

“We didn’t see this coming," Donna Trim-Stewart, the grandmother, said at a White House-sponsored discussion on the health of Black mothers. “It's the unexpected way we lost her.”

To mark Black Maternal Health Week, Vice President Kamala Harris led a discussion Tuesday of the issues that make African American women two to three times more likely than other women to die because of childbirth. Harris noted that Native American women are 2.3 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women.

“Race should never determine health outcomes — and pregnancy and childbirth should be safe for all,” President Joe Biden tweeted. “But for too many Black women, safety and equity have been denied. This Black Maternal Health Week, our Administration is taking action to change that.”

Harris, who is Black, said that throughout her career she's heard stories about women whose complaints about pain or postpartum depression were ignored or dismissed. She blamed systemic inequities and implicit bias and said the consequences are "very real.”

“Black women deserve to be heard. Their voices deserve to be respected,” the vice president said. “And like all people, they must be treated with dignity.”

Before the discussion, the administration announced a series of steps to address U.S. maternal mortality rates that are among the...