#Black super mom how to
She wanted to teach patients, especially Black women who she's seen taken advantage of in the medical system, how to take control of their bodies and advocate for themselves. Israel opened her clinic amid the pandemic need, in June 2021. And rural hospitals are closing at an alarming rate, leaving gaps in health care, while about 20 percent of Mississippi women are uninsured, according to census figures.Īll these issues plagued Mississippi before the pandemic, but Israel and others said COVID-19 made matters worse, with overwhelmed hospitals and a flailing economy. Mississippi also ranks among states with the highest maternal death numbers, with Black women again disproportionately affected. Mississippi has the highest infant death rate in the nation, and Black babies die at roughly twice the rate of white children, federal statistics show. If we really are a pro-life state, we have to do more than try to end abortion and make sure that women are healthy.”
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“Mississippi is pro-birth, but not pro-life. “We’re doing everything wrong,” Israel said. Wade, advocates say nothing is being done to support women who choose to give birth. As state Republican officials spend time and resources trying to ban abortion and awaiting a ruling that could overturn Roe v. Nearly all have nowhere else to go.Ĭlinic CEO and founder Getty Israel says Mississippi leaders are failing these women every day. Most are at risk for conditions such as hypertension and heart disease. Many haven’t been to a doctor for years, until they became pregnant and qualified for Medicaid. Would they see her? Had the stress of the storm affected her pregnancy? Where would she go if this place turned her away?Īlmost all the mothers served at the clinic in Mississippi's capital are Black women without insurance, like Allen. On that last tank of gas, she arrived in a panic. Allen couldn't find another doctor even within an hour's drive - certainly not one who'd take a patient without insurance or an ID, which was destroyed in her home by Ida.įinally, a Jackson-area hospital that turned her away suggested the Sisters in Birth clinic.
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But the lone local obstetrician splits her work between two rural counties and wasn't taking new patients. Her first priority was finding a doctor to check on her baby boy. So Allen - along with her 6-year-old daughter, her mother and a niece - fled in it to the rural Mississippi town of Kosciusko, where family lives. She spent three nights in the remnants of a house with a torn roof and no electricity. Miracle Allen used her last tank of gas to drive an hour and 15 minutes to the closest clinic that would care for her and her unborn baby.Īllen, 29, was four months pregnant when Hurricane Ida ripped through her Houma, Louisiana, community.