SHAWNEE BENTON- GIBSON: The revolution will be tweeted, Instagrammed, Facebooked. I planned on spending a lifetime with Amber. We can turn our pain into power and make something of this.īRUCE McINTYRE III: Shamony Gibson! We hear you. OMARI MAYNARD: We fight against maternal morbidity event by event in order to create change. NUBIA MARTIN: If these numbers were flipped around and white women were dying at the rate that Black women are dying, it would be a national crisis. I’ve never lived in this house without her.īRUCE McINTYRE III: You just got to keep pushing forward. OMARI MAYNARD: Hundreds and thousands of men are going through the same situation. Why is that?ĪNITA WARREN: This is a growing epidemic in our community. OMARI MAYNARD: We waited a solid 12 hours.īRUCE McINTYRE III: Black women are four times more likely to die than their white counterparts with the same symptoms. SHAWNEE BENTON- GIBSON: I’m like, “Do y’all talk?” OMARI MAYNARD: They kept asking her mother: Is she on any drug? “Is she on drugs?” Next set of people come in. SHAWNEE BENTON- GIBSON: The ambulance came. OMARI MAYNARD: After she gave birth, Shamony was complaining that she had really sharp chest pains.
SHAWNEE BENTON- GIBSON: And yet she still died. SHAWNEE BENTON- GIBSON: She was awake, aware and active. SHAMONY MAKEBA GIBSON and OMARI MAYNARD: It’s a girl! SHAWNEE BENTON- GIBSON: My daughter’s story is loud, colorful and artful. They’re Shamony Makeba Gibson, who was 30 years old when she died of a pulmonary embolism in October 2019, 13 days after giving birth at Brooklyn’s Woodhull Hospital, and 26-year-old Amber Rose Isaac, who died April 2020 after an emergency C-section at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. Now a new documentary looks into the crisis of maternal mortality among the Black population, centering the stories of the families of two young Black women who died after giving birth here in New York City just six months apart from each other. According to the Centers for Disease Control, Black women and people are three times more likely to die than white women and people during or after a pregnancy, due to racism and bias at hospitals and clinics, and chronic underlying conditions caused by inequity in the healthcare access. The United States already has the highest maternal mortality rate of all wealthy nations. Public health experts are warning abortion bans will likely lead to more pregnancy-related deaths, with Black women and people disproportionately impacted. Wade, the battleground for abortion access has shifted to the states. I’m Amy Goodman.Īs reproductive and abortion rights advocates in the United States continue to reel following the Supreme Court’s gutting of Roe v. AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!,, The War and Peace Report.