Reproductive advocates say Louisiana Black women will continue to suffer without Roe V. Wade
BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — On June 24, 2022, Louisiana’s strict abortion ban became the law of the land. Around that same time, Kaitlyn Joshua was preparing to be a mother again.
“My daughter is now five but at the time she was three, almost four,” Joshua explained. “And we were just kinda thinking it would be a perfect time to add a baby and we were really excited to do that.”
But all that excitement turned into endless doctor visits, confusion and pain.
“My provider’s office stated that they wouldn’t be able to see me, until the 12-week mark,” Joshua said. “The pain that I was experiencing was worse than what I had experienced delivering my daughter.”
Joshua thought she was having a miscarriage, but medical providers and doctors were too afraid to diagnose or treat her.
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“I asked her, so is this for sure a miscarriage, like am I not going to be able to continue this pregnancy. She said I’m not sure and I can’t really tell you that in this moment, but I am sending you home with prayers,” said Joshua.
Joshua had no choice but to wait until the miscarriage passed. She says if the law had been different, she would have had access to an abortion. The same procedure often used during miscarriages.
Latoya Harris says she looks at maternal health differently as a Black woman. She says she almost didn’t make it out of the delivery room alive. According to Harris, she said she was given an epidural that didn’t work. She kept telling doctors that something wasn’t right.
“After losing so much blood, I passed out and I woke up to just wondering did I code or did I have to be revived,” Harris asked.
But she pulled through and so did her baby girl. Harris and Joshua are not only mothers with survival stories, but they also represent a statistic. According to the CDC, Black women have the highest rates of pregnancy complications in the U.S.
These women are thankful to be alive, knowing they could have been among the thousands of Black women who die during childbirth.
“They are often times living on lower incomes than their white counterparts and they are also facing implicit or even sometimes explicit racial bias within the health care system,” said Michelle Erenberg, executive director of Lift Louisiana.
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“There just needs to be more health care during the pregnancy that’s provided to them,” said Sarah Zagorski from Pro Life Louisiana. “As well as support with more information about the risks that could be involved and those sorts of things, that can help them have a safe birth.”
The CDC says Black women have the highest maternal death rate in the country and in Louisiana.
“There’s a lot of existing health disparities that exist already along racial lines in the state of Louisiana. Black women are less likely to be insured,” Erenberg explained.
“We know that there are women who become pregnant where they don’t have doctor visits and they don’t have access to those things,” said Zagorski.
Now that abortion access is prohibited in the state, pro-choice advocates believe the number of Black women who die during pregnancy will go up, because they will be forced to carry pregnancies to term.
As of 2019, a CDC report found about 40% of women who receive abortions are Black. That report cites Black women are more likely to live in poverty. The National Institute of Health says Black women are more likely to live in contraceptive deserts.
According to the following non-profits, including Advocates for Youth, Black Girls Equity Alliance and Giving Compass, Black women often face barriers in accessing proper sex education.
A study done by the National Black Women’s Justice Institute found that Black women experience high rates of sexual violence. Black women also have the highest rate of unwanted pregnancies.
“We have lawmakers, not doctors that are making these policy decisions, it’s actually adding to those structures of disparity,” Erenberg explained. “The problem is not going to get any better, it’s only going to make the problem worse”
“There’s more that can be done to improve maternal health outcomes,” Zagorski said. “That’s something we are working to do by providing funding to abortion alternatives in the legislature.”
But many, like Joshua, doesn’t think lawmakers want to fix the disparity.
“It doesn’t fit the narrative of the pro-life movement to address the health care disparities,” Joshua said. “It’s so much cuter to create a study than it is to actually throw dollars at an entire community addressing a maternity care desert or sex education in schools.”
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“Educating youth, providing support to pregnancy care centers and helping with funding for those resources, that’s our whole mission,” Zagorski explained. “It’s not only about the unborn child, it’s about caring for the mother as well. We want to help them both.”
Until lawmakers do something about it, Joshua believes there will be more stories like hers and Harris’.
“It’s all about control. It’s all about making sure that women understand our place,” Joshua said.
“By God’s grace, he protected me,” Harris said. “Our lives definitely matter.”
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