Virginia advocates, lawmakers look to address high Black maternal mortality rate

“We are not heard, and we’re not believed.”

The fate of Jennifer Carroll Foy’s newborn babies’ lives came down to simple math for her doctor. 

Carroll Foy’s identical twin sons were born when she was 22 weeks pregnant in 2017. Viability at the time was considered 24 weeks. By that math, they wouldn’t survive. All she and her husband could do, the doctor told them, was hold their babies and wait for them to slowly die.

That wasn’t good enough for Carroll Foy, who today serves as a Virginia State Senator representing parts of Fairfax and Prince William counties. Carroll Foy, who is Black, pushed the neonatologist to do more, and doing so helped save her sons’ lives.

“If I would have listened to the neonatologist, I would have pretty much been complicit with him in killing my children,” Carroll Foy said in an interview with The Dogwood. 

Carroll Foy’s experience offers a glimpse into the fraught and often tragic outcomes Black Americans face when navigating a US health care system still impaired by structural racism and implicit bias. The situation is especially dire for Black people going through pregnancies. 

 Black women in Virginia were about twice as likely to die a pregnancy-associated death than their White counterparts in 2021, according to a 40-page study released in February by the Virginia Department of Health. 

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than White women. The figures are alarming given that more than 80% of pregnancy-related deaths in the US are preventable

‘We are not heard’

Carroll Foy’s struggle with the health care system did not stop at fighting for her sons’ lives. She had to fight for her own, too. 

In the aftermath of her pregnancy, she was sent home by nurses and doctors who did not believe her concerns about the extreme pain she was experiencing. 

Back at home, Caroll Foy’s husband found her wracked with pain in the fetal position on the floor. He rushed her to the emergency room where they learned that Carroll Foy would have died within days had her husband not intervened. 

“I almost lost my life, and my children almost lost their lives because Black women are not seen,” Carroll Foy said. “We are not heard, and we’re not believed.” 

Kenda Sutton-EL, founder and executive director of Birth in Color, a Richmond-based nonprofit, said it is common for doctors in Virginia to ignore the concerns of Black women. 

“Some of the doulas go to the patients’ visits with them, and you’ll see the bias,” Sutton-EL said in an interview with The Dogwood. “You’ll see where providers just brush off the patient’s concerns when a lot of these could have either saved the baby, saved the mom, or addressed their issues so it doesn’t get worse.” 

Policy goals 

For years, lawmakers and advocates have fought for laws and policies in Virginia that can address the dismal Black maternal mortality rate and what they see as Virginia’s fragile laws protecting reproductive justice.

Sutton-EL of Birth in Color and Carroll Foy support an expanded task force to study maternal health outcomes. Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed legislation earlier this year that would re-establish a maternal health data task force before issuing an executive order about a month later to accomplish a similar goal. 

Carroll Foy is also working to help start a pilot program with Philips, the electronics manufacturer known for its televisions, to get women devices that can do portable sonograms and ultrasounds that can be shared with their healthcare providers. 

Perhaps the largest goal this coming year for reproductive rights advocates is the proposed constitutional amendment that would add the right to reproductive freedom to Virginia’s state constitution.

While sometimes referred to as an “abortion amendment,” supporters want the public to understand the amendment would also protect prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, miscarriage management, and fertility care.

The link between access to reproductive care and maternal mortality rates make the issue even more urgent, according to Han Jones, the political director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia. 

“Prenatal and maternal health are not separate issues from abortion,” Jones said in an interview with The Dogwood. “Many of those states that enacted abortion bans already had the highest maternal mortality rates and more than half of Black women in the US right now live in states that ban or limit abortion.”