For Black women in the U.S., lack of access to healthcare can be very dangerous. According to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), Black women are three times more likely to die from “pregnancy-related causes” than white women. And out of all pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S., more than 80% are preventable.
Bashellia Williams, a doula and perinatal patient navigator at the Morehouse School of Medicine, thinks it’s getting worse.
“It’s not even a stagnant number. We’re finding now that number’s trying to creep up.”
Helping mothers is something Bashellia has wanted to do since she was in high school. She says it’s something that’s “woven into my bones.” When she first became pregnant at 17, she started by becoming a champion for herself.
“My resource was the library. I didn’t have it in the palm of my hand. We had to read and learn and figure things out,” Bashellia said. “That inner-knowing got me through it.”
Now a mother of six, she recalls feeling “under-informed” about her first pregnancy. When she thinks of her own daughter’s pregnancy 3 years ago, those same emotions come flooding back. That is when the weight of the challenges facing pregnant women hit her in the “most intimate, personal way.”
During a hospital visit, Bashellia said staff didn’t think her daughter was going into labor. They eventually sent them home.
“I got her somewhere where she was comfortable, I think on the couch, and I went to my room and I just cried,” she said. “They sent us home about three in the morning. The baby was born in my bathroom at 7.55 a.m. the next morning.”
“That really awakened my inner advocate.”
