Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - Maternal Mortality: The Crisis We Keep Ignoring

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

Why is the United States—one of the wealthiest nations in the world—leading in maternal deaths among high-income countries? And why are Black women three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women?In this episode, we unzip the urgent and often-overlooked crisis of maternal mortality in the U.S. We dig into how systemic racism, lack of access to quality healthcare for everyone, abortion restrictions, and profit-driven medical systems contribute to hundreds of preventable deaths each year. Highlighting that this isn’t a “new” problem, but one that has been allowed to persist in the shadows—especially for women of color.We also talk about the human cost of recent abortion bans, the chilling effect on healthcare providers, and the hypocrisy in the "pro-life" movement, while doing so little to protect people throughout pregnancy, during childbirth, and through post-partum. This conversation is a call to stop looking away and start giving a damn.Whether you’re someone who’s planning a pregnancy, supporting someone through one, or simply believe in human rights—this episode is for you.Because birth shouldn’t be a death sentence. And staying silent? That’s not an option.To learn more about the important work and information Black Mamas Matter does, click here: https://blackmamasmatter.org Click here to find the article Dr. Sue talked about, you can find that here: https://blackmamasmatter.org/our-work/key-readings/To learn more about this and find ways you can become involved - check out The Center for Reproductive Rights: https://reproductiverights.org/our-regions/united-states/If you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestions

Hey everyone, welcome to Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We are here to dive into the topics of sex and sexuality that you might be curious about. but don't always feel comfortable talking about. No judgment, just open, honest conversations. So zip down and let's get candid. Today's going to be a bit of a topic. Don't you think, Dr. Sue?

I do. Not very descriptive, a bit of a topic. A bit of a topic. A bit of a topic. That's my Irish roots. We're going to be talking about the maternal mortality rate in the United States. We are. So before, before we unzip that, and I'm sure that zipper is going to get caught a couple times. I am the first time we've used that. I was like, as I as it

popped in my head, I was like, why haven't we done that? Seriously? I am here with Dr. Sue, as you all just heard. And so, hi, Dr. Sue. Hi, Charlie. Hi. You want to give our listeners a little bit about your background? I'm sure you've got a good tailoring for today. I do. So, actually, I don't. I have a PhD in human sexuality education, and I have worked for, it seems like forever, but several decades as a health educator and more specifically a sexual health educator. I work in academia but I also do a lot of stuff in the community and so that's where I think I run into a very different experience because when I talk about it and with my college students they're like yeah why do I care like it's not me it's so far away if I ever have children

and when I'm working in the community like there's a real palpable fear especially now of getting pregnant and the risk of death from doing it, which is really not about my credentials. So I work in academia primarily, but then I also work as Hey Dr. Sue. So I do answer people's questions about sex and all things related to sexual health. And I post the question and answer once a week, every Sunday, all over social media. And right after Dobbs, I did get a lot of questions about kind of what does this mean and then the question trailed off and now i'm starting to get more questions again because we have some data going out which is also not my credentials i know this is an ongoing issue for me i i care less about the journey of dr sue and avoiding

her accolades so we're just going to stop talking about them and we're going to talk charlie instead so charlie because you do better at this than i do for those of you who do and don't know charlie um she is our curious co-host who is always ready to explore the ins and outs of all these things that we don't talk about because they are so taboo do you want to do better than i just did with my credentials well yeah and i i'm gonna add a qualifier i don't struggle with this because i don't have a profession i wasn't setting you up for that no i know you weren't i know you weren't i just want to qualify why it is so easy it it may seem easier for me to talk about myself in this realm because i am just i'm just someone

sitting here talking with dr sue keeping me on track calling me out but i am someone who um if you're a first-time listener i am i have always been fascinated with the psychology of humanity and individuals i have always been been, from the time that I can, some of my earliest memories, I have been someone who has wondered, well, why? Why do we? Why is this? Why is that the answer? Especially when it comes to some social justice things. I was thinking about this the other day. In the state that I grew up in, I don't know if I've mentioned the state, but in the state that I grew up in, in elementary school part of our our curriculum was native american history and it was called that it was

called native american history um and i remember hearing the stories of when air quote missionaries colonizers uh came into california there it is there's the state uh came into california and encountered um the Native American populations and their um their drive to convert them to Christianity and and other religions and I remember thinking why didn't why didn't they just leave these tribes alone these nations alone there was no need for this and so that's that's one of my earliest memories of being like no this doesn't make sense that was stupid look at what you did um all of that to say that i am someone who enjoys challenging taboos what it means to be a woman in society and what society has conditioned me to believe that i am allowed

to speak about um what i'm allowed to enjoy all of the challenging all of that and just saying i'm a fucking human i want to enjoy the human experience the way that i want that i choose to as often as i am able to choose to so that's me so see i don't have to shy away from from a an illustrious career of being a badass in this industry so you i'm a newbie i'm a baby i'm a baby in this industry you we should we should do one episode where you just make me stay on my credentials no yes yes and then suddenly this episode became about consent no this episode's about maternal mortality um and i want to give a little if that's okay about how we got here i know you usually set us up for that but yeah i i would like you to give that and

i would like both of us to highlight why listeners should listen to this episode maybe we should till the end yeah let's start with that basically like why you should care about this episode yeah if you care about humans there it is yeah yeah care about your communities yeah this is not when we talk about maternal mortality i i fear and what i witnessed and i'm sure dr sue this is something similar you introduce the word maternal and people are able to compartmentalize it and shove it in a certain corner in their brain if they are male if they don't plan on having kids all of these things if they can't because they've already had a hysterectomy or they've gone through menopause or yeah but this is this is not solely a women's issue it is a

public health crisis it is in america it is i want listeners to sit with that it is a public health crisis in america especially now with certain decisions especially in certain states and communities um the other thing is that 80 80 to 90 percent of maternal deaths are preventable in America. And largely, maternal mortality is a mirror of our society and how the value that it places on the life of the living, people who exist, we'll get into that, I'm sure, a little bit later in this episode.

But how are the American society, our American society, values the lives of the living autonomy and equity anything else anything you'd like to add and if you don't get that like if you're still sitting there going yeah but why should i care or maybe we've already lost you maybe you heard my general mentality and you skip to the next episode this is about caring about the people in the community around you and not just your not not just the community you're in like the all the communities like this is about caring for your neighbor this is about caring for the people who aren't telling you about their struggles this is this is about this is a this is a human rights issue for me

um so i am going to backtrack a little bit and do actually some more of my credentials just so people know where i'm coming from i am a master certified health education specialist and have been for a while i am also certified in public health and so this is this is something that is not new. Like, I have been talking about this for a very long time. And really, since the Dobbs' decision is kind of started, we stopped getting data from some states completely. But I think it's shining a highlight, a spotlight. Sorry. I think it's shining a spotlight on something that those of us who work in this field have already been like, woohoo, this is a problem. Hello. So the way we got to this topic was that we do a little brainstorm, like, ahead of time.

I'm like, what do you want to talk about next? Because I usually have things like, I want to do this. And Charlie's usually like, I don't really know enough about that. Sometimes it's so neat. Usually? Ooh. That's not, not, see, now you're making me feel bad. But like, you could have a discussion about it, but not an episode about it.

Does that, you want to do more research? You also, even though, don't make me, that wasn't, I'm moving on. Good. You know where that was coming from. and so with the anniversary of the Dobbs decision now we're starting to get reports and and now we're starting to get data and now people are putting things out and so for a good two weeks my inbox from all the listservs and all the mailing lists I'm on was just being flooded with information about this and I said it's time it's time we talk about this and so when we were

talking about what do we want to do next it was like oh this please sometimes we're trying to find something sexier because we know that there is a certain amount of people who are looking for clickbaity shit um or i mean that's not really it's never been our audience um but there's not a lot sexy about maternal mortality um but we decided it was time so so i think we should start probably with the definition of maternal mortality because i think a lot of people don't know the definition and this gets a little difficult because how the rest of the world defines it It is actually a little bit different from the United States. So the way we define it in the United States, it's any woman who dies while she's pregnant, while she's giving birth, or with up to a year after she's given birth.

Other places, I'm thinking more the World Health Organization difference, where it's like while you're pregnant, as you're giving birth, and up to 42 days. And I've had people be like, well, that's the difference in the numbers. Let me just spill the secret now. Even before the Dobbs decision, the U.S. had one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the industrialized world. And it is not always good to be number one. I joke about that with my students. Like, we're number one. I'm like, this is not what we want. We want to be well in the weeds. Like, we want to be down in the double digits. um so part of the argument people try to make with me is like oh it's because we're looking at such a longer time frame and i'm like but why is that if even if that is although a lot of times when we're looking at our internal numbers versus what other outside agencies are looking at it with they may still be using the same the same standard why is that okay that more women are dying like right make you make we're no matter how long or short you make that timeline we still

so that's that ratio just changes just not so people tend to think it's only during during childbirth and it's not it's actually during pregnancy during childbirth and then that that part of that postpartum time um so i think it's just really important that we're we're saying that because i have had people be like oh you mean during childbirth i'm like no no we gotta back that up because if we don't back it up we don't get to talk about health care and health care access early on in the pregnancy which can help make this process easier and and and hopefully healthier um for both the mom and the baby um so we have to talk about health care starting from the beginning which is when she's pregnant actually i would like to talk about health care

from before that because women are getting pregnant now who don't want to be because they're having problems accessing contraception um i mean i could take it all the way we could take this all the way back to sex education when you're 13 i mean all right i'll stop yeah it's your job you gotta pick a little window yeah you're supposed to you're supposed to hurt me so we've got our definition yes um i think we should talk a little bit about why america is so bad at maternal health and mortality right deep side i don't know if people i don't know if my microphone just picked up my deep side it's racism to a large degree we have to talk about the racism you cannot talk about maternal mortality without talking

about racism and i brought this up in class a few years ago because i talk about this on human sexuality class and i said why you know i showed them the graphs comparing united states to other industrialized countries and they're a little shocked when they see it and then i say but why like why is this happening the exact you know why is this happening and inevitably it becomes about what the mother did wrong uh well she was she was she had cardiovascular disease or some kind of health issue like diabetes or she was fat because that's what we say to all women you know whenever anything goes wrong it's got to be about your weight note sarcasm um or she waited so much longer and we do we are seeing women waiting longer to have babies and the older they are

when they have the babies it does technically increase the risk of having complications but death is not a complication that we should be accepting and so i had it's not the outcome that should happen i had a student raise his hand and he's like because of the age of the woman i'm Like, I'm glad you brought that up because I have this handy dandy chart that actually comes from we should probably put the link to this somewhere in the chat and not in the chat in the description. There is an article by Donna. Excuse me, not Donna. Doctor Monica McLemore. She had an article in Scientific American and it was called to prevent women from dying in childbirth. First, stop blaming them. So so this idea that is somehow the woman's fault. and then so the students you know he's going on and on about how this is some something about the

women and what we know is that yes as you get older there is a complication there are more more likely to have complications but then if you still break it out by race it is a racism issue there you cannot address maternal mortality without addressing racism and the difference in rural care and urban care and maternity desert maternity care deserts and reproductive health deserts and yeah yeah criminalization of pregnancy outcomes yes and a lot of the new laws and this is where those are the reports are coming out now is because we're a few years after dobbs and again i don't think some of the states are releasing all their data but i know i sent you some of the data ahead of time it is terrifying to take a look at

and what we're seeing is that in states where abortion is protected either because there have been laws specifically put to protect it or it's actually been made part of the state constitution there's been a decrease in maternal mortality but in states where abortion is illegal there has been an increase and i'm not talking like a one percent increase i am talking about a huge yeah notable yeah something you know something that's like if you're looking for highlights not really a highlight of like the data that's that's the thing that pops up Um, so that's kind of where we were starting with this, but we can't, it's not the same. And I'm going to pick on Texas and California because that's what some of the reports were highlighting is it's, it's, it's like they're living in two different countries. Like the, the maternal mortality rate in California. I mean, it's still like it to be zero, um, which is not possible. is so much different for someone living in texas but then also women of color

in the same state are going to have higher rates of maternal mortality than white women so it's you know part of it's about we're not really we don't really think women's health is important we just don't as a culture which is or pain right women's pain isn't real any self-identified thing that doesn't feel normal and um you know one example to me that pot or a couple unfortunately but um the story that strikes me often because i am a fan of tennis and i've always been a fan of the williams sisters but serena williams someone who has access someone who has money someone who is well known said something's not right and she kept getting dismissed and that is largely because she is a

black woman her status her achievements in tennis being the goat in tennis didn't matter because she is a first to the large a large portion of the health care community and implicit biases none of that mattered what mattered what they saw was a black woman air quote complaining and not looking for help and so if she had been in a different socioeconomic position would there be a serena williams i don't even want to answer that question yeah i don't either i just want people to sit with that yeah and it's something that she talks about openly as well yeah i had to advocate so hard and continue to say this is not right something's not right

something's not right this is not i this doesn't feel normal yes sorry i realize people can't no that's okay that's okay sometimes silence is good for for those things actually i don't usually anyone who listens to the show knows i'm not really big on numbers because the numbers can be flubbed and the numbers don't often really you know if i ask 100 people and they all look the same i'm not really getting a sense of what's happening and i usually make up numbers but there's one that's that's pretty specific that i want to bring up and that was that i'm just going to read it straight out from the quote the mortality rate of black newborns in hospital shrunk by between 39 and 58

when black physicians took charge of the birth because black physicians believe black women and then we weren't planning on getting into this we're always like where are we going to go and this did not come up but one of the things that we're going to see changing especially with recent changes to education and loans and funding is that we're going to see folks who come from poor communities are not going to be represented in med school the way they have the way we were starting to see them and the way we need them to be um and that's actually across multiple fields so yeah yeah but that number is striking i mean we we also well there's a whole thing about when when women are your surgeons you actually what of whatever race when women are your surgeons you

tend to have better outcomes but yet we you know don't use the term doctor when we speak to women surgeons we call them miss or misses like we could do we could do just the whole thing about women in health care but yeah yeah absolutely um i think the the other striking thing backing up just a little bit is that there is a there is a data problem with this with these numbers there's underreporting misclassification especially depending on the state especially a state like texas um and the lack of standardized data collection with this kind of information across the country but even with that problem mm-hmm we are still fucking awful to women who are going through a birth journey yep

and especially women of color yeah especially black women and i and i i know people are like oh you know why are you talking about this because we have to because you have to start shedding light on it and normally i would like if i was in my classes i'd start rolling into a whole thing about reproductive justice and if you don't know that term we may do something on it but also the whole thing about reproductive justice is black women and other women of color centering their experiences and that is not something that charlie or i can do um so we're gonna i have some ideas of people i'd love to bring on to talk about their work in that area but but we need to start talking about this because it is absolutely a racial issue but it's

also not in some it is absolutely racism i want to say that it's absolutely absolutely totally racism i'm not trying to undo that but i also want to say that women of all races um there was something that was put out by i don't even remember what the organization was um i could probably look it up if i needed to that that one in six women will will receive some kind of mistreatment during childbirth so being screamed at being being lied to being denied services being threatened one in women of all of and it's obviously worse for women of color and actually worse for um indigenous women than it is for black women um so so we have let's back it up I know for me I want to say like this all starts at you know this all starts at your first sex ed class you know um but I don't

think Charlie's gonna let me go back that far so well yeah and then because then that's an accent But that is also an access issue and where you're able to go to school and the information you're allowed to access and the state you live in and the funding there. So no, we're not going to do that. Oh, that's another episode. So when we're taking a look at folks who are really starting prenatal care, which is when we can start taking care of both fetus and mother, because this is about both of those journeys, we have problems with maternity care access.

So there are maternity care deserts. I think some folks know the term food desert, which is where you can't get access to fruits and vegetables and whatever the radius is. Same kind of concept with maternity care. We have maternity care deserts right in the middle of country. Like if you look at the country and draw a line north to south, like all the way from Canada, all the way to Mexico, and then it spreads out a little bit in like a lowercase T. we have women who cannot access care while they're pregnant and then if they're even if they make it through their 40 weeks of of pregnancy with no problem then we have women going into hospitals who are being treated who are not being believed who are being mistreated they're being yelled at they're being denied care they're being bullied and then we're just kind of like bye-bye and hoping that they get postpartum care now some women do live in areas

where they have excellent reports with their doctor and they're able to get this really good postpartum care but that is not what it looks like for everyone and and so there's so many places we can step in and do something about this but the re well let me stop before i go into the next thing i don't know if didn't know if you want to chime in yeah i well i would just to add on that But it really, what is really striking to me about this conversation is like just an overarching thing is, I mean, I already have many frustrations with the way women in society are treated. But the fact that in this country, if you are a woman, your chances of dying based off of which state you live in, for a variety of causes, but for this episode, for maternal health,

where you live what state you live in really kind of heavily influences your chances of survival yeah but that's but that's and that is the antithesis of what we were taught and given where we are today but what we were taught was america america was supposed to be equitable and we know that's not true yeah thank god no one can see my face right now yeah we all we all fucking know that's not true go back to our our episode about our rage after uh after january um but that just is so insane to me so i yield my time no i it's just one of those things that we know i mean so some of the work i also do is in men's health for those of you who are like oh you know women talking about women's

issues i also talk about men's issues because we don't talk to men about their issues and you're a huge advocate for men's health i am you were major you and when the beginning of our friendship i want to just plant or make this known at the beginning of our friendship that is somewhere that you really ignited an interest and passion for me as well because you can't you can't care about just half the population we can address and daylight the challenges that we that we continue to face as women but we can't forget about the other people we exist with yes yeah so anyway glad i let that men's health yeah um but it's one of the things that i talk about is that there's so many things that are going to impact men's health and part of it is where they live

and part of it is whether or not they have access to care and part of it is what messages they're getting in the media around them and whether or not they're being told this is important and stereotypes and things like that. I don't I don't want to get too much into like the health education public health thing. But there are things called social determinants of health. And the social determinants of health are essentially for those of you studying for your C for your chess exam, here you go. The social determinants of health basically say that where you work, where you live and where you play are going to impact your health, because it's going to be about what do have access to? Is it a safe neighborhood? Are there jobs available? If there are jobs,

are they very hard on your body kind of jobs? So basic social determinants of health is nothing new. We know this. And by the way, for those of you who think we're just going off on a racism thing, it's been a few years since the CDC has said that racism is a public health issue. This is not just us deciding this is a racism thing that needs to be addressed. This is a public health issue but we've always known from the social determinants of health that like where you live is going to impact it because when they shut down clinics i know everything shut down during covid like everything shut down during covid yeah when they started reopening clinics they weren't opening them in the inner cities they it was and a lot of we saw a lot of doctors

doing concierge care they would come to you but only if you could pay the fee and some i know specifically some of the STI's testing centers in areas where I've lived over the last five years some of those clinics never reopened to full-time hours because it it's it was just they were being impacted by finances because where you live where you work where you play all that's going to impact care but it's worse when it comes to pregnancy it's worse for women that's a stupid sentence by the way and when we say you know i don't think it is because i you know hopefully well i do have support true i do want to point out that when we're using the term women we do know that people who identify as male and non-binary can get pregnant and so we are not necessarily

limiting we're we're trying to keep the language easy because this is a hard topic with lots of layers um but we do want to i want to at least acknowledge that we do understand that you can identify as male or non-binary or we want to acknowledge we want to sorry i don't like to speak for you last time i spoke i said something stupid so but well you weren't speaking for me then wow anyway anywho um so i do want to just acknowledge that but but yeah i mean we've known this forever that that those social determinants health play play a role but it's like somehow we don't get that when it comes to maternal health and i don't understand why and i don't understand why this is acceptable. That's the thing that bothers me. This is not new. Are we seeing a

much larger discrepancy between states since it's three years past odds? Absolutely. This problem existed five years ago. This problem existed 10 years ago. And I struggle to understand why we're not doing more to support women, especially people who say they're pro-life. I saw that look. To me, and I will own this statement, to me, I do not understand how you can say that you care about life, but do not care about women dying before, during, and after childbirth. It does not make sense to me. Because it's branding. It is branding. the pro-life movement branded themselves brilliantly when what they really are at

their core is pro-birth because they don't actually care about the life of the mother or the child or after yeah once it's born about the once it's born yeah yeah um the other thing i wanted to point out which i just totally lost i may throw it back to you because i cut myself off actually 10 minutes ago i think and i was like oh wait before i go down there yeah oh one of the changes from maternal mortality has been the changes in abortion laws since since the dobbs decision three years ago and so yeah yeah one of the things that we're seeing is that we're putting we've made not we i am not owning this states have passed laws that have essentially made it really scary for health care professionals to know what they cannot

cannot do and we're seeing women dying from things that were preventable and part of it is because the medical system is a doesn't really know how to step forward they recently have a case of the female um the female politician in florida who had an ectopic pregnancy and needed care and was like bleeding and couldn't get it because of the law she helped pass that was around abortion i mean she wound up having to call the governor and not everyone has that ability so a lot of the reason we're talking about maternal mortality now is that because of the laws that we passed to supposedly protect the lot to protect lives is killing women yeah end episode thank you so much no we probably have well the other example recently right is that the woman in georgia

who was brain dead whose family wanted her off life support because of but because of georgia's laws she was kept on life support so that they could cut that baby out of her and i say it that way in turn intentionally because she was dead she was brain dead she could not give birth yep they kept her alive to cut the baby out of her went as soon as they could as soon as that baby could be kept alive in an incubator you know i don't even know what happened to the baby after all that yeah it's uh uh i believe probably the baby is still in neonatal icu yeah and talk about the trauma for the family talk about the lack of consent talk about you know that child talk about the child that child survives and grows up

like talk about there will be no support resources for that child because all of that funding has been cut certainly in states like georgia and the family had to pay for her care that's the thing that kills me and i don't know if so i'd heard somewhere a rumor that like they were stepping some someone was stepping in or some agency was stepping in to pay for her care but they were paying for care all that time i don't know though i don't know how financially stable the the family was before that but any kind of long-term hospital stay can be enough to decimate a family a family's finances um yeah it was and and you'd hear like medical health care staff saying you know this is our nightmare we know what's right and we know what's wrong and we're

being told what we can and cannot do and when you otherwise they'll be criminalized right and that's so i go to a conference that is primarily health care providers reproductive health care providers and it was two years ago it's it's in the fall the conference you could feel the tension in the room that staff didn't know what you know they went into this field because they want to take care of people they went to this field because they care about humans and and they're now they're like we don't know when to call legal we don't know if we can call legal we don't know if we shouldn't like is this ask permission or ask forgiveness and then like you can have serious consequences if if you do something that you think is for the best thing for your patient

like we're taking that away from these these doctors we're seeing more and more doctors who are waiting longer and longer to wait to make decisions because they're trying to get legal involved before they make health care decisions so it's i mean when it's the first time i've ever walked into that conference and felt like the discomfort of the health care providers about we don't know how to do our jobs well anymore and within their own values but within their oath yeah you know you know and then and then add on top of that we've talked a little bit about the access to care depending on with which health insurance agency you are you have your insurance through medicaid medicare united united health whomever yeah people in call centers and granted

i believe there are medical professionals in those call centers but they are being held to a standard that goes to the revenue and the bottom line of the company not the interest of the patient or the child i mean i think go ahead no no you go i think the other thing that concerns me too is that we segment through language we are segmenting a piece of women's health this is women's health it's not just whether or not you want to be a mom because i feel i i get the sense sometimes that when people hear maternal, they, they assume that the woman has a maternal desire, they want to be a mom, they want this journey, all of these things. And so too. And I don't think that the label necessarily is wrong, because we need to understand what happens to women's health

when they are on a maternal journey. But so much of it, I think, to your point earlier, starts so far ahead of that birth journey of that maternal journey it is a women's health issue and a men's health issue yeah it's it's a human issue it's a human issue um but but what can happen when you segment a piece of of a health issue is that you only look at at that piece of it instead of a woman has you know uh oh god i can't think of the name polycystic pcos yes thank you yeah ovarian syndrome polycystic ovarian syndrome you know having conversations with that woman who has pcos about the implant like meaningful conversations not not being a scientist and being like well here's the odds and you know um so it also we need to focus on maternal mortality

and the blatant effects of racism on that and the racism that exists within the health care industry when it comes to black indigenous brown women who are pregnant but again there's so much there's so much that can part of why it's so preventable is because there needs to be better understanding of women's health prior again prior to the birth journey and dr sue is nodding in agreement yeah but it's also about i mean we have to talk about the racism we have to talk about the misogyny that exists as well which we're not going to spend the entire time talking about because that could be an episode of its own but it also comes back to just the pay the pay structure i mean and i know we talked about this with dr kara who is the pelvic floor pt who did

the couple episodes before this one so if you're just tuning in for this one if you're like oh maternal mortality that sounds fascinating um we did do a couple episodes with a pelvic floor pt and she talked about the importance of having a health care team and that's we don't see that because of the way our insurance is set up because the because the american health health care system And I do think I think I don't think I know that racism is a huge part of the maternal mortality issue. I know that misogyny is a huge part of it. I know the the fact that we that we don't think it's important is just part of this issue. But it's also the United States health care system. It's the system itself is not designed to take care of the person. Capitalism doesn't give a shit about people. Yeah. So. So on that note.

yeah on that ray of sunshine right not our happiest episode not our sexiest episode but it's important it's important a critical episode yeah it's important if you think you want to get pregnant if you never want to get pregnant if you have friends and family who can get pregnant if you have love you know if you if you're married to someone who can get pregnant like people need to be aware of what it looks like in this country i mean women have given birth for like literally entirety of human civilization and yes we've always heard stories about women dying in childbirth but i don't think people realize how bad it is in this country and how preventable so much of it is and that's the problem yeah that's the issue for me yeah that

go ahead sorry no and and one of the reasons they don't want to do that is one it's women and we don't spend a lot of time like you said talking about women's health care but you cannot shine a light on maternal mortality without shining a light on systemic racism and that makes people uncomfortable and i don't really give a shit like until you can look at the system and until you can look at the system and understand the problem you can't help fix it and if you're not willing to do that then you're part of the problem i was just going to add that it's look it's not just looking at the system it's looking at your part in the system yeah are you a white female caregiver who can speak up who should speak up when you see a a black patient not receiving the care the

compassion the level of care you may witness the doctor give it a white patient it's it's understanding your part in this system and what you can do um to change that meaningfully so that it becomes equitable and you may think i can't change the whole system you can change your microcosm you can change your little bit of the universe and it will be scary because you may be introducing a cultural shift in your workplace but it is necessary yep it is necessary because nobody deserves to be dismissed because of the color of their skin it's fucking ridiculous i think that's a perfect place to end no i do i mean there's like so like summary maternal mortality is a horrendous thing that is vast majority of it is preventable but it can't be

until we start understanding the scope of the problem and until we start talking about it and all the things that go with it including the racist the racism part um there are two organizations i especially the racism part sorry no there's two articles i want to two articles two organizations i want to highlight and we'll throw the links to them in the description one is black mamas matter alliance and it's black mamas matter.org and they do have a link to that article that is not behind a paywall by dr mclemore on basically stop blaming women for dying and the other is center for reproductive rights they do a really good job of breaking down legislation state by state so if this is the first time you're hearing about this and i don't give a damn what race you

are i don't care give a damn what religion i don't care what your color is i don't i don't care your your gender i don't care um start educating yourself that's your homework oh i haven't given homework in a while that's your homework yeah go to blackmamasmatter.org and read and hey maybe support or volunteer but read if you if you read there's so much i don't even want to say just read this article, but read. And then check out the Center for Reproductive Rights so you know what's going on in your state at the legislative level. And find out and figure out with all of that, with your homework, the takeaway will be figure out how you can get involved if this is something that lit a fire inside of you. And it doesn't have to be constant activism, anything. It could

be like dr sue said volunteering calling support find find a way to impact this issue because we all have a part and especially white people have a part to change this for our our i'm i'm so um but we have a responsibility because we can't continue to benefit from a system that harms are compatriots we just can't that's not that's not who we should be as a society and bringing it back to the beginning this is a mirror the fact that this is such a health crisis in america is a mirror for how america values lives women people of color men people who are lower on the economic scale people who live in rural areas and can't access i mean it's yeah Yeah. I'll give people the homework. If this is starting to sound a little overwhelming, I'm going to give you the homework I give my students, no matter what class I teach. Like at the end of the semester, I give them homework. If you're like, I'm overwhelmed, I can't do it. Like, I'd love to go to blackmamasmatter.org. Have I said that enough yet? Blackmamasmatter.org.

if I you know don't want to go to center for reproductive rights if if that just feels overwhelming you don't feel like you could sit down and do it justice right now on your social media which I'm guessing 95% of you have I want you to start following people who do not look like you different race different color different ethnic different different religion different different socioeconomic status different lived experience different lived experiences is really what i want you to come up with and then even if you're not doing activism every day at least you're seeing it in your feed at least you're and maybe you're not spending you know you're not interacting with it or you're skipping it but it's starting to get into your subconscious and

that's what i wanted to do so if nothing else just just find some folks follow those organizations they're on social media and then you'll see some of this coming out just i'm not asking you to be an advocate or an activist 24 hours a day we all need to sleep ideally but the one if that's the smallest step you take from this well that and share the episode but if the smallest step you take from this is just to put somebody at least somebody maybe more than one human or organization that doesn't look like it's centered around you that's going to make a world of difference in the long run i think three to five i'll give you a number all right three to five that works for me yeah i and then just want yeah before we wrap up i do want to say again if you are thinking well

there's always been women who died during childbirth there is no reason that america should have the number of women dying because of childbirth or pregnancy there's no reason for where we are technologically etc for us to have this rate of death versus 1800s america like there's no there's no fucking reason for it and it's only to get worse as we close rural health centers and as we close other health centers and as we eliminate funding through medicare medicaid and education yeah and education and then insurance companies are going to feel like they can stop covering stuff because they've already shown they don't really care about the human aspect of it um if this enraged you good if you our work is done yeah well and if

you think it's going to get better unfortunately my little doom cloud that i am it's only going to get worse it's only going to get worse based on what we've seen with legislation in the last week two weeks i don't know when we're releasing this so maybe even longer ago But recent legislation is actually going to make these numbers go up. And that's considering how high they are now. That's terrifying. So that is also a call to pay attention to your local elections and the people that you are. Because that's really where this starts, is local elections, not just the overall general nationals.

So on that note, we've given you homework. we've told you to pay attention at local election level and if especially if you are um a white person you need to pay attention to this so that you can help make it better for our black community members all another we we need to do better yeah we need to do better with everyone we exist with especially our communities of color so on that note if you made it this far thank you for joining us on this episode of unzipping taboos we really hope today's episode sparks some new thoughts a fire in your belly about this topic will open up conversations worth having internally externally what what have you and please remember

that your curiosity is the key to breaking down these barriers and embracing a healthier understanding of sex, sex health and relationships. If you enjoyed the show from this particular episode valuable, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who you think might need to hear this who would benefit from hearing this. We're not just if you want them if you want to spark some thoughts for them as well. If you've got a question or a topic you want us to dive into, please reach out to us via the link in the episode description. We'll drop a couple of extra links about some of the things we referenced today. And we want to give a very special shout out to Ali O'Brien for incredible theme music. Thank you so much, Ali.

And then until next time, keep the conversation going, keep unzipping those taboos, and everyone, take care and do better for your community. © transcript Emily Beynon