11-17-2025 12:08pm

Maternal Risk in America Cuts Across Class, Coverage, and County Lines

Ypsilanti PressLLC Editor

It’s Not Just Medicaid: Why Maternal Risk in America Cuts Across Class, Coverage, and County Lines

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288 followersNovember 12, 2025

People love to assume that maternal deaths only happen in underserved communities—poor, uninsured, or uneducated women. But that’s the greatest misconception in modern healthcare. Maternal mortality in the United States is not just a Medicaid problem; it’s an American problem. The statistics prove that money, education, and access do not guarantee survival. This crisis is systemic, cultural, and deeply rooted in the way medicine was built—and the way it continues to fail women today.

When Fame and Fortune Still Don’t Save You

If wealth, power, and private insurance were enough to protect women from medical negligence or racial bias, Serena Williams and Beyoncé would be the safest mothers in the world. Yet Serena nearly died after giving birth because her doctors didn’t believe her when she said she was experiencing symptoms of a pulmonary embolism. According to her own account, she had to demand a CT scan to prove her life was in danger.

Beyoncé, another global icon, revealed that she suffered from preeclampsia and had to undergo an emergency C-section. Olympian Allyson Felix endured severe preeclampsia that forced an early delivery of her daughter at 32 weeks. And Tori Bowie, another Olympic gold medalist, tragically died from childbirth complications in 2023.

Actor and advocate Tatyana Ali also went public about her traumatic birthing experience, describing how her pain and distress were dismissed during labor. In interviews, she’s spoken openly about feeling unseen in the delivery room — despite her fame, education, and resources — and has since become an advocate for maternal health equity. Her story echoes the same truth: even privilege cannot protect women from systemic bias in obstetric care.

These women are not “underserved.” They are among the most resourced, insured, and visible women in the nation—yet they were still failed by the very healthcare system designed to protect them.

According to the CDC, Black women with a college degree or higher have a pregnancy-related mortality rate 1.6 times higher than White women with less than a high school education. That statistic alone shatters the myth that socioeconomic status provides immunity from inequity in care. This isn’t about poverty. It’s about bias.

The Missouri Reality

In the state of Missouri, where I currently reside, the data is equally alarming. According to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services’ 2025 Annual Maternal Mortality Report, between 2018 and 2022, 350 women died while pregnant or within one year of giving birth—an average of 70 deaths each year. Eighty percent of those deaths were deemed preventable.

The report also shows that Black women are two and a half times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than White women. Mental health conditions—including substance use disorders—are now the leading cause of pregnancy-related death in Missouri, followed by cardiovascular disease.

Geographically, the disparities deepen. Women living in micropolitan counties experience the highest mortality rate—nearly 39 deaths per 100,000 live births—while the state’s Northeast region reports rates exceeding 42 deaths per 100,000.

To put it plainly, Missouri ranks among the top 10 worst states in the nation for maternal mortality and morbidity, consistently falling near the bottom of national health report cards. Whether you measure from the top down or the bottom up, the result is the same: women in Missouri are dying at unacceptable rates—and most of these deaths should never have happened.

A History Written in Pain

To understand why this problem runs so deep, we must confront the truth about where modern obstetrics came from. The so-called “Father of Gynecology,” Dr. J. Marion Sims, built his legacy in the 1800s by performing experimental surgeries on enslaved Black women—without anesthesia.

He performed dozens of procedures on women like Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey, while giving anesthesia to the poor Irish women and white women in New York he later operated on. Sims’ work was praised in medical history books, but the human cost has never been fully reckoned with.

That mindset—that some women’s pain is tolerable, that their cries don’t carry authority—didn’t die in the 19th century. It evolved. It lives on every time a woman says, “Something doesn’t feel right,” and a doctor replies, “You’re fine.”

This Is Systemic

According to the CDC’s 2023 Vital Signs report, one in five women report being mistreated during maternity care, and 45 percent said they felt afraid to ask questions or share concerns. These experiences were not limited to low-income or uninsured patients—they were reported across all backgrounds.

We see the same story over and over again: dismissiveness, delayed diagnoses, and underestimation of pain. These are not random mistakes—they are symptoms of a medical system that prioritizes procedure over personhood, and profit over empathy.

The fact that the United States has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations says everything. The problem is not the patient—it’s the practice.

The Real Question: What Are Medical Schools Teaching?

If medicine was built on the pain of women who were denied anesthesia, then we must ask what today’s medical schools are teaching about empathy, equity, and respect.

Are students learning about implicit bias and cultural humility, or are they learning how to bill efficiently and move quickly? Are obstetric residents trained to listen—or to rush?

Until we redefine the culture of medical education, the results will stay the same. Women will keep dying. Mothers will keep being ignored. And families—especially Black families—will keep burying their daughters for reasons that are preventable.

We Can’t Reform What We Refuse to Acknowledge

Change begins with accountability. Hospitals must listen, medical boards must act, and legislators must fund real maternal health reform—not symbolic programs that overlook the root causes.

When a system fails women across every income, every education level, and every county line, it’s not a coincidence—it’s a design flaw.

It’s time to rebuild the foundation of maternal care in America. Because the cost of ignoring women isn’t just numbers in a report. It’s lives.

– Sherress Hicks, MS, QMHP, CSPO, HCM

Founder, MaternaCare