Dear 19th family:
In the three months since The 19th soft-launched, the world has changed. But our mission — to elevate the stories and voices of the nation’s underrepresented women — has only become more critical.
We’ve turned this weekly newsletter into a thrice-weekly must-read. We’re breaking news on women and the 2020 election with The Washington Post. We’re producing weekly “ Portraits of a Pandemic” with The Philadelphia Inquirer. And we’re forging ahead with plans to launch our own website later this year, where *all* of our journalism will be free to consume by readers, and free to republish by every other news organization in the country.
Is this a scary time to be launching a start-up? Heck yes it is. Do we need your help to put our foot on the gas? PLEASE and THANK YOU. Every $19 helps. Join The 19th today to help us keep women front of mind in this pandemic — and this election cycle. And if you are already a founding member: THANK YOU. We appreciate all you do to support and spread the word about our work!
Emily Ramshaw
CEO & Co-Founder, The 19th
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Sen. Kamala Harris, with Reps. Lauren Underwood and Alma Adams, introduced several bills aimed at reducing maternal mortality rates. The 19th also spoke with Harris in a Q&A below.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
MATERNAL HEALTH
The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country — there are nearly 700 deaths due to complications from pregnancy or labor each year, about 60 percent of which are preventable. But for black Americans, giving birth is especially dangerous.
Today wraps up the third annual Black Maternal Health Week, which highlights the dangerous disparities that black mothers face.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in 2018, the maternal mortality rate among black women was 37.1 per 100,000 live births.
- The rate fell to 14.7 per 100,000 among white women and 11.8 for Latinas.
- Researchers have noted that the heightened risk of maternal mortality among black women spans education and income levels.
A National Institutes of Health study found that black women are 166 percent more likely to experience severe maternal morbidity — illnesses or conditions caused by childbirth — than white women.
- Short-term consequences of severe maternal morbidity include cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, gestational diabetes and bleeding that leads to blood transfusions.
- Severe maternal morbidity can also lead to health effects for years to come, including chronic diseases such as hypertension.
In March, U.S. Reps. Lauren Underwood, Alma Adams and Sen. Kamala Harris introduced a suite of bills aimed at reducing maternal mortality rates — which includes addressing health care workers’ biases.
- The Black Maternal Health Momnibus — composed of nine bills — would “tackle systemic health disparities,” Harris wrote in Essence.
- Among the measures: expanding postpartum Medicaid coverage; investing in housing, transportation and nutrition, which partly determine maternal health outcomes; and diversifying the perinatal workforce (physicians, nurses, doulas, midwives).
- The Momnibus also calls for implementing implicit bias training for health care workers involved in maternal care, which California has already done.
Public health experts don’t have a simple explanation for why black women die at 2.5 times the rate of white women. It’s likely a combination of factors.
- Black women are less likely to have access to quality perinatal care. They are also more susceptible to conditions such as obesity and hypertension.
- But researchers also say that the institutional racism in health care is part of the equation.
The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened anxiety about giving birth, particularly among black women.
- Dr. Melissa Simon, who is researching the effects of COVID-19 on black pregnant women, told Good Morning America that hospitals remain the safest option.
- Hospitals are allowing doulas, who serve as advocates for pregnant women and can help improve birth outcomes, to join via video or phone calls if they are unable to be in the room.
— Abby Johnston
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Sen. Kamala Harris on coronavirus, disparities and the veep question
By Errin Haines
This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Sen. Kamala Harris of California has remained in Washington, pushing for legislation that addresses the crisis’s impact on minorities and marginalized communities. The 19th spoke with the former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate during Black Maternal Health Week about issues including maternal mortality, pay equity, benefits for low-wage workers and how the pandemic could impact the 2020 election.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
19th: Let me start by just asking how you are and how you and your family are navigating this pandemic.
HARRIS: Everybody is making it work, right? And so it is about adjusting to a lot. … I am doing more phone conferences and Zoom conferences all day long. There’s a good 10 minutes total that is spent saying, “Can somebody mute themselves? Can somebody unmute themselves? Who’s the heavy breather?” But many of us who are as fortunate as we are are having a very similar experience. What pains my heart is people who are standing in food lines for hours, those health care workers.
19th: A lot of your focus has been on how this crisis is disproportionately affecting women and marginalized communities, whether they ever get the virus or not. Why is it particularly important now to sound the alarm on these issues?
HARRIS: Any crisis hits those who were in crisis before the hardest. And the reality is that this public health crisis has shone a microscope on the gross disparities that existed based on race, based on income, long before we ever heard the word “coronavirus.” And so the focus that I’m putting on it is just to make sure their voices and their experience are heard in a way that we not only bring immediate relief, but we also see this as a moment that is demanding that we fix broken systems.
When you look at issues like health disparities based on race — but it’s also based on income — what we’re seeing is, black people are 20 percent more likely to have asthma. That’s a respiratory issue. This is a respiratory virus. You look at high blood pressure, 40 percent more likely to have; lupus, black women three times more likely to have than white women; black women are three times more likely to die in childbirth. And it has nothing to do with their socioeconomic status or their educational status. It literally has to do with their race.
19th: We know that former Vice President Joe Biden — now the presumptive Democratic nominee — has pledged to put a woman on the ticket. Is the role of vice president one you feel you are qualified for, especially in this moment, and is it one you are interested in?
HARRIS: I have to be very honest with you: I am not thinking about that. I really am not. Literally, I did not leave D.C. They’re saying in the next couple of weeks, D.C. is going to hit its peak. I’m talking on almost a daily basis with one or another mayor of my state — if not my governor — about the fact that today and tomorrow, they’re running out of masks. People are standing in food lines for hours. Literally, this is so real, it is so present, and this is my focus. I feel a very profound and deep sense of responsibility to bring voice to some of these issues.
When it all comes down to it, what each of us does as a leader at this moment … these moments of crisis are a real measure of leadership. I’ll tell you I’m honored, of course, to be part of the conversation, but it’s not where my head is at.
Read the full Q&A: Sen. Kamala Harris on coronavirus, disparities and the veep question (April 15, 2020)
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SICK LIST
New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that 73 percent of health care professionals with COVID-19 are women.
Women account for 76 percent of all health care workers, according to the Census Bureau.
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 What we're reading
Elizabeth Warren backs Biden, extending display of party unity. In a week of big Biden endorsements — from Sen. Bernie Sanders to former President Barack Obama — Sen. Elizabeth Warren has also thrown her support behind the presumptive nominee. Now let the veep speculation begin. (NPR, April 15)
I’m an E.R. doctor in New York. None of us will ever be the same. This harrowing “diary” by physician Helen Ouyang is an intensely visceral account of what it’s like working through the pandemic in New York, the hardest hit area in the U.S. (The New York Times Magazine, April 14)
The economic impact of coronavirus on women is 'devastating' and exacerbating gender inequality, says Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg. Sandberg’s words: “You know how they say never waste a crisis? We need to not waste this moment to fix the structural problems that women face.” (Newsweek, April 10)
Female world leaders are handling coronavirus crisis 'in a really impressive manner,' experts say. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan have all received praise for their reaction to the pandemic. (USA Today, April 17)
The heartbreaking last texts of a hospital worker on the front lines. The headline of this story — a wrenching account of the last days of Madhvi Aya, a physician’s assistant at Woodhull Medical Center, in Brooklyn — says it all. (The New York Times, April 15)
Basketball livestream accidentally illustrates the wealth gap between women and men athletes. A friendly livestreamed game of HORSE between NBA and WNBA players juxtaposed the practice setups between the two, and how the female players “do not live on palatial estates with elaborate indoor courts attached, instead competing from their perfectly average suburban homes, complete with ad-hoc basketball hoops.” (Jezebel, April 13)
🎧 Listen: A wife from Wuhan and a husband from Lombardy, both living in America, experience different timelines in understanding the urgency of the coronavirus pandemic as it sweeps from their hometowns to their home. (Rough Translation)
📺 Watch: Mrs. America is the fictionalized story of the real-world fight over ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment, which goes on to this day. (FX)
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