As Erica Garner Is Mourned, Why Are Black Mothers in NYC Dying at 12 Times Rate of White Mothers?

In Harlem, hundreds of people attended the funeral Monday of antipolice brutality activist Erica Garner, who died at the age of 27 on December 30 after an asthmainduced heart attack, four months after giving birth to her second child. Erica’s father, Eric Garner, was killed when police officers in Staten Island wrestled him to the ground, pinned him down and applied a fatal chokehold in 2014. Her funeral came as a new ProPublica investigation suggests Erica Garner’s postpartum death might be part of a wider national problem in which hospitals are failing AfricanAmerican mothers, leading to disproportionately high maternal mortality rates. Every year in the United States, between 700 and 900 women die from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. For every woman who dies, dozens more experience severe and sometimes lifethreatening complications annually. We speak to Annie Waldman, a reporter at ProPublica. Her most recent article is titled “How Hospitals Are Failing Black Mothers.” The piece is part of a larger yearlong ProPublica investigation called “Lost MothersMaternal Care and Preventable Deaths.”

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