Inside the Black Maternal Health Crisis: This Is About Humanity

“The doctor–patient relationship has to shift from hierarchy to equality,” Dr. Tina Koopersmith told me during our recent conversation for my podcast, What’s Hype About Health. “We need emotional intelligence and implicit bias training embedded in medical education—not as an afterthought, but as a foundation.” I wrote this while in Cape Town, South Africa, where both she and I were serving on a humanitarian healthcare trip with the South Africa Impact Tour, produced by Melanie Soloway and Sir David T. Fagan.

Dr. Koopersmith is a board‑certified OB‑GYN, fertility specialist, and transformational healer with more than 30 years of experience at the California Center for Reproduction. She is also the author of ‘Your Healing Playground: How Play, Pleasure, and Connection Unlock Your Body’s Power to Heal, which explores how stress, shame, and cultural conditioning pull us away from vitality—and how reclaiming wonder can guide us back.

When she speaks about maternal health disparities, she is not theorizing. She is reflecting on decades of watching the same patterns repeat: Black women dismissed, delayed, and dying from preventable complications.

Our conversation followed two viral incidents in November 2025 that ignited national outrage.

In Mesquite, Texas, Karrie Jones sat doubled over in a wheelchair at Dallas Regional Medical Center, screaming in pain while a nurse calmly continued intake questions. Her mother, filming, asked, “Y’all treat all your patients like this or just the Black ones?” Twelve minutes after Karrie was finally admitted, her baby was born. The video drew tens of millions of views.

Days later in Indiana, Mercedes Wells spent nearly six hours at Franciscan Health Crown Point before being discharged, despite contractions one minute apart and her water breaking. Minutes later, she gave birth in her truck on the highway. Her husband Leon, with no medical training, delivered their daughter, Alena. Congress later introduced the WELLS Act in response.

Then came the news that shattered any illusion that credentials can protect us. On January 2, 2026, Dr. Janell Green Smith—a Black certified nurse‑midwife and maternal health advocate—died from complications related to childbirth. A woman who dedicated her career to saving mothers died from the very complications she worked to prevent.

When I raised these cases with Dr. Koopersmith, she did not hesitate:

“This is a systemic failure,” she said. “And fifty percent of maternal deaths are preventable. The solution is communication, compassion, and accountability.”

When Credentials Can’t Save You

I understand this crisis from both sides—as a healthcare provider and as someone who nearly became a statistic.

I am a board‑certified nurse practitioner with ICU critical care experience. When my body started sending warning signs during pregnancy—relentless headaches, rising blood pressure, severe swelling, and an enlarged heart that was not being addressed—I knew exactly what I was seeing.

I described my symptoms using medical terminology. I was dismissed. “Keep working,” I was told.

I developed post‑cardiac complications from symptoms that were present early enough to prevent this outcome. One morning, I woke with a clear premonition that I was going to die. I forced myself to the hospital the next day. Even then, I faced delays and skepticism. My daughter was delivered prematurely in an emergency that earlier intervention could have prevented.

I survived—but I carry lasting damage. If this can happen to me, a clinician with a doctorate and critical care background, what is happening to Black mothers without these tools, titles, and language?

The Numbers Behind the Crisis

During our podcast, Dr. Koopersmith walked through devastating statistics.

Black women in the United States are about three times more likely to die from pregnancy‑related causes than white women. In recent years, the Black maternal mortality rate has hovered around 50 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with roughly 15 for white women. More than 80 percent of pregnancy‑related deaths are considered preventable.

Despite major advances in medicine, the overall U.S. maternal mortality rate has climbed dramatically since the late 1980s. As Dr. Koopersmith explained, “The system has failed Black women specifically.”

She cited overlapping factors: higher rates of chronic illness, limited access to high‑quality care, implicit bias in clinical decision‑making, and a growing loss of human connection in modern medicine. “The reliance on computers over direct patient engagement has contributed to declining quality of care,” she said. “We’ve lost the art of listening.”

The History We Are Still Living

To understand why these patterns persist, we have to confront the history.

In the mid‑1800s, Dr. J. Marion Sims—often called the “Father of Modern Gynecology”—performed experimental surgeries on enslaved Black women without anesthesia. He operated on Anarcha, an enslaved teenager, at least 13 times without pain relief, justified by the racist belief that Black people do not experience pain like white people. Once he perfected his technique on Black women, he performed the same procedure on white women—this time using anesthesia.

Versions of that myth still exist. Studies show Black patients are less likely to receive adequate pain medication, and Black women’s pain is more likely to be minimized or dismissed.

“The deep‑rooted distrust of the medical system in the Black community, from Tuskegee to the legacy of J. Marion Sims, must be acknowledged and actively addressed,” Dr. Koopersmith told me. “We cannot pretend history isn’t still walking into the exam room.”

What Must Change Now

Dr. Koopersmith laid out what real systemic change demands:

• Redefine the doctor–patient relationship.** Move from hierarchy to partnership, with emotional intelligence and implicit bias training as core requirements in medical education—not optional electives.  
• Normalize patient advocates.** Doulas, support persons, and community advocates should be welcomed in labor and delivery. Outcomes improve when someone is in the room whose only job is to support the patient.  
• Invest in simulation training.** Teams that regularly run drills for high‑risk obstetric emergencies respond faster, communicate better, and make fewer fatal errors.  
• Treat social context as clinical data. Zip code, income, racism‑related stress, and adverse childhood experiences all shape maternal outcomes and must be part of every risk assessment.  

“Fifty percent of maternal deaths are preventable,” she emphasized. “We have the knowledge. What we need is the will.”

What Black Mothers Need to Hear

Hospitals must treat maternal health disparities as urgent institutional failures, not PR problems. Systems must ensure that no pregnant woman in active labor waits unattended, that no serious symptoms are brushed off, and that no patient is discharged without a physician evaluation.

To Black mothers, I say this with my whole heart:

• Trust your body. You know when something is off.  
• Speak up—and keep speaking up. Your voice is a vital sign.  
• Bring an advocate whenever you can. It should not be necessary, but right now it is protective.  
• Document everything: names, times, symptoms, recommendations. Your paper trail is power.

You deserve urgent, respectful, life‑saving care—every single time.

I live every day with complications that earlier intervention could have prevented.  

Dr. Janell Green Smith is not here to tell her story.  

Mercedes Wells carries the trauma of a highway delivery.  

Karrie Jones has millions of strangers who watched her pain become content before it became care.

As Dr. Koopersmith said to me, “This is not just about medicine. This is about humanity.”

Black maternal health is not an abstract talking point; it is a life‑and‑death crisis, right now. Until every Black woman can walk into a clinic or hospital knowing she will be believed, respected, and treated with urgency, this fight is not over.

From South Africa to the United States, Black women are demanding a different future—and those of us who survived are determined to help build it.

Those of us who survived are not staying quiet.

Here’s our full conversation

About the Author

Dr. Natasha Weems, DNP, AGPCNP‑BC, is an award‑winning nurse practitioner, media correspondent, and author. A recipient of the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award, she is the founder of Pearl Health Foundation and host of the What’s Hype About Health podcast. Learn more at www.drnatashathenp.com and connect on Instagram at @drnatasha_

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