Speaker 1: Welcome to the nonprofits. Today, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: a very disturbing case that highlights the intersection of race
Speaker 1: and reproductive health. AJ, what do you have for us today?
Speaker 2: We are discussing a deeply troubling case that underscores the
Speaker 2: complexities of reproductive rights and the criminalization of pregnancy outcomes.
Speaker 2: And Mary Marriage is a twenty three year old black
Speaker 2: woman from South Carolina. She finds herself facing murder charges
Speaker 2: after the tragic loss of her pregnancy in March twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three. Following a visit to the hospital for severe pain,
Speaker 2: she gave birth to her baby in a badroom toilet
Speaker 2: and was later accused of failing to provide aid to
Speaker 2: her infant. This case raises critical questions about the implications
Speaker 2: of restrictive reproductive laws and their disproportionate impact on marginalised communities.
Speaker 2: As we explore her ordeal and the Brothers Society or indications,
Speaker 2: we invite you to consider how these reflects on our
Speaker 2: healthcare system and the urgent need for compassion and understanding
Speaker 2: and discussions about pregnancy and loss. This story is from
Speaker 2: The Atlanta Brackstar by Jill Jordan Cider on September twenty four,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Thanks a J. Now I know that one of the
Speaker 1: people involved in this said this had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the overturning of Roe v Wade, completely unrelated. These
Speaker 1: are not the droids you see kind of mentality is
Speaker 1: what it felt like to me, and not trying to
Speaker 1: make light of this situation because what happened to this
Speaker 1: woman is a nightmare. But what do you think, aj,
Speaker 1: Do you think that this had something to do with
Speaker 1: Roe v Wade being overturned? Are we seeing a new
Speaker 1: focus in new ways or do you think that we're
Speaker 1: just I'm just wrong in thinking that.
Speaker 2: No, you're you're right. I mean, the biggest issue with
Speaker 2: abortion bands is that it doesn't prevent abortions. Ali does
Speaker 2: is cause more deaths, or it brings more charges to
Speaker 2: desperate women who are full to seek medical care after
Speaker 2: a miscarriagh thinking that they're going to be charged. It
Speaker 2: leads to women finding dangerous and unsafe methods to deal
Speaker 2: with unwanted pregnancies. So this is why rodbi Wade was
Speaker 2: so monumental and important. It provided protections for women to
Speaker 2: safely seek medical care related to pregnancy and other reproductive
Speaker 2: care right. It gave a place for them to have
Speaker 2: a safe, apportioned choices because it comes down to body autonomy.
Speaker 2: It's a choice that women need to be able to make.
Speaker 2: And in this case, while marsh still has her life,
Speaker 2: it has been turned upside down. She was detained parmas
Speaker 2: a month, she faced murder charges. It disrupted her vucation.
Speaker 2: They put her through more trauma than she could have imagined.
Speaker 2: All that, on top of the loss of her baby,
Speaker 2: is unthinkable that in this day and age, we still
Speaker 2: have to hear about these kind of stories, and it's
Speaker 2: all thanks to the overturning of ov Wait.
Speaker 1: I think you're probably right. I think that we're seeing
Speaker 1: a new focus because we've opened the can of worms.
Speaker 1: You know, here in Texas we got people wanting to
Speaker 1: make it illegal to use Texas highways to go to
Speaker 1: an abortion clinic. And all these absolutely, ultimately are unenforceable things.
Speaker 1: But it also leads to situations where, or at least
Speaker 1: we hope, are unenforceable. But it also leads to the
Speaker 1: situations where we have people who like this one who
Speaker 1: it seemed like when they interviewed her immediately they already
Speaker 1: knew that she are suspected. They were told, whether true
Speaker 1: or not, that she had been to a planned parenthood
Speaker 1: months before, and I just found that incredibly invasive. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like we're taking miscarriage and making every miscarriage in
Speaker 1: the planet an act of a suspicious act.
Speaker 3: What do you think, Carol, Yes, I found that particularly
Speaker 3: troubling too. It's essentially almost trying to extend in practice,
Speaker 3: if not in law, these prohibitions and bands on abortion,
Speaker 3: to then include miscarriages as well, because where do you
Speaker 3: draw the line between the two. You know, there's many
Speaker 3: many pregnancies will naturally end in termination, whether it's spontaneous
Speaker 3: just because the body, you know, it doesn't work out.
Speaker 3: But now we're criminalizing people who are trying to carry
Speaker 3: babies to term or carry a pregnancy to term. Sorry
Speaker 3: I misspoke there. They wanted to have a baby, and
Speaker 3: yet now even in those instances, if they don't produce
Speaker 3: a child successfully, we're criminalizing that almost as if it's
Speaker 3: the same as getting an abortion, except we're not making
Speaker 3: any effort to contribute to things like I don't know,
Speaker 3: providing comprehensive prenatal care at an affordable cost that will
Speaker 3: help people have healthy pregnancies. I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 3: shocking that that would, you know, matter, And that's exactly
Speaker 3: the problem I think that we're encountering here too. This
Speaker 3: was someone who it sounded like didn't have access to
Speaker 3: a lot of things that could have contributed to having
Speaker 3: a more successful pregnancy experience. We don't know what the
Speaker 3: person encountered at planned parenthood or what was going on,
Speaker 3: but we do know that it sounded like this person
Speaker 3: was not terribly informed about what was going on. We
Speaker 3: know that they tried to go to the hospital and
Speaker 3: were not able to receive care. We know that they
Speaker 3: did not have a lot of knowledge about the process.
Speaker 3: And you know, what we're seeing is that now we're
Speaker 3: criminalizing being I guess, less informed, having less access to care,
Speaker 3: to money, to financial resources that would help you be
Speaker 3: able to have better health outcomes. And this is where
Speaker 3: it gets to the racial disparity that you mentioned. You know,
Speaker 3: we people don't like to think that these kind of
Speaker 3: disparities exist, but they do. Black women in particular, which
Speaker 3: is what happened in this case, tends to be not
Speaker 3: only criminalized in many things that they're doing, but also
Speaker 3: treated unfairly and unequally in healthcare settings. And again we
Speaker 3: see that in this case, we know, according to the CDC,
Speaker 3: that black women are three times more likely to die
Speaker 3: from a pregnancy related cause than white women, and this
Speaker 3: is due to factors like disparities in the quality of
Speaker 3: healthcare that they're receiving in underlying chronic conditions that may
Speaker 3: be related to their experience of financial instability, structural racism,
Speaker 3: and all of these other things, as well as implicit
Speaker 3: biases that they encounter when they enter the healthcare setting
Speaker 3: and the law enforcement setting when they're being criminalized for
Speaker 3: these things. And so they're all related to one another.
Speaker 3: And this criminalization of not just abortion, but now even
Speaker 3: just the pregnancy outcomes themselves, whether they were intentional or not,
Speaker 3: is simply exacerbating these disparities that have already existed all
Speaker 3: this time. And it's hard to not see that as
Speaker 3: an intentional outcome in some cases. I hate to be
Speaker 3: pessimistic about people's motivations for promoting these abortion bands, but
Speaker 3: it's hard to miss the disparities.
Speaker 2: Glad you brought up the expectations of pregnancy outcomes, right,
Speaker 2: because the more we cover these cases of women's reproductive
Speaker 2: rights by the autonomy abortion and pregnancy laws. The more
Speaker 2: I am convinced that the people enacting these rules, which
Speaker 2: more often than not people that don't even have an
Speaker 2: uters and shouldn't be managing them, have incredibly unrealistic expectations.
Speaker 2: They expect every single woman to have a perfectly healthy
Speaker 2: pregnancy with zero complications, to you know, become pregnant under
Speaker 2: the perfect circumstances marriage while in love, you know, like
Speaker 2: obviously marriage to a matter. Yeah, yeah, that's because what
Speaker 2: else side, and then to give birth to a healthy
Speaker 2: baby every single time. And in this there is no
Speaker 2: room for anything else in their minds. These laws go
Speaker 2: beyond abortion. They focus so much on saving the lives
Speaker 2: of and unviable fetos that they completely ignore the fact
Speaker 2: that there are suggesting laws that border on torture and
Speaker 2: abuse of women. So it seemsact for women in America,
Speaker 2: pregnancy has become a threat. And it's not even from
Speaker 2: the pregnancy itself. It's from society, because you become a
Speaker 2: criminal if anything goes wrong with your pregnancy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have to say that. I wish I could
Speaker 1: say that you were just getting ahead of yourself and
Speaker 1: making a big to do about nothing, because that's often
Speaker 1: what we hear on these type of issues. Oh, you're
Speaker 1: just blowing smoke, this is there's nothing here. But hopefully
Speaker 1: most of us have learned by now with with Dobbs
Speaker 1: that this isn't blowing smoke because these people are directly
Speaker 1: signaling what they're wanting to do. We look at Paxton
Speaker 1: here in Texas, who wants to get an idea of
Speaker 1: make a database essentially off who's pregnant. There's a reason
Speaker 1: why they want that information because, like you said, if
Speaker 1: it's it's a healthy pregnancy, or it's an act of suspicion,
Speaker 1: and that's that's very dangerous. But going back to something
Speaker 1: care that you said, when yeah, if we want healthy,
Speaker 1: if we want to have healthy pregnancies, let's start with
Speaker 1: universal health care. Let's talk about you know, good prenatal
Speaker 1: let's talk about and if we want talk about pro life,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a whole lot of things
Speaker 1: far beyond just pregnancy. But yeah, let's let's start there.
Speaker 1: But it seems that these same people in these same
Speaker 1: states time again don't want to address those issues. They
Speaker 1: want to address this, Well, let's make sure that abortion stops,
Speaker 1: And yes, I think it's insane to believe that anyone
Speaker 1: who thinks that Roe v. Wades overturning did not impact
Speaker 1: this needs needs to pay attention. You're just not paying attention.
Speaker 1: But one thing Carol wanted to ask you about. You
Speaker 1: mentioned some of these problems that I just discussed. What
Speaker 1: are we seeing as far as in these states where
Speaker 1: we're seeing the tightening of Roe v. Wade laws. What
Speaker 1: are we seeing as far as that mortality rate? Are
Speaker 1: we seeing that being impacted for both mothers and for
Speaker 1: mortality rate of infants themselves. Are we seeing anything like that?
Speaker 3: Yes, I believe we are, and I don't have the
Speaker 3: exact statistics on this. I think it's going to take
Speaker 3: a little bit of time to see a trend develop.
Speaker 3: But this is not the first instance of a case
Speaker 3: that we've heard of like this. If you read articles
Speaker 3: on any major news source that's following this issue, you'll
Speaker 3: see example after example of someone whose life was tragically
Speaker 3: lost as a result of not being able to access
Speaker 3: care that they needed, either because they were having a
Speaker 3: miscarriage and they were not able to receive care because
Speaker 3: the doctors were afraid that they would be in some
Speaker 3: kind of legal trouble for intervening. You're seeing people who
Speaker 3: are children, young girls that are now carrying pregnancies to term,
Speaker 3: and now their life trajectory, their health is massively impacted.
Speaker 3: We're seeing people who are surviving complications to pregnancies, maybe
Speaker 3: in some cases surviving in other cases not that are
Speaker 3: due to chronic health conditions that they knew in advance
Speaker 3: were going to be incompatible with a healthy, successful pregnancy,
Speaker 3: and yet they were stuck putting their bodies through that
Speaker 3: and putting their lives at risk for no good reason. So, yes,
Speaker 3: we've seen this happen, and we've seen the results begin
Speaker 3: to appear before our eyes. I know recently there was
Speaker 3: a certain political candidate made some kind of statements such as, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, where are these people that are these women
Speaker 3: that are supposedly, you know, showing up to emergency rooms
Speaker 3: and bleeding out in the parking lot. Well, sure enough,
Speaker 3: we can point to several examples of that happening recently
Speaker 3: where someone has not been able to access the care
Speaker 3: that they needed while they were having a miscarriage or
Speaker 3: some sort of pregnancy related life threatening issue. This is
Speaker 3: a real thing that's happening to people, regardless of whether
Speaker 3: some want to pay attention to it or not or
Speaker 3: say oh, well these are rare, Well, okay, those are
Speaker 3: people that that's happening to. Those count and we don't
Speaker 3: need to be having any of those cases occur, and
Speaker 3: yet here we are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd love to say that there's no secret that
Speaker 2: you know, women of color have a much had a
Speaker 2: rate of maternal mortality or death related to pregnancy and childhood,
Speaker 2: and that clearly studies have shown that black women are
Speaker 2: more likely to experience life threatening conditions like you say,
Speaker 2: briefs in conditions, but even preclamcy or powder memorrhation, blood cloths.
Speaker 2: But there was also complications with the babies, as you men,
Speaker 2: as you asked that question, and I think that I
Speaker 2: did hear some statistics on that. There was a study
Speaker 2: It wasn't national, but it was a study in California
Speaker 2: that showed that even when a black mother was in
Speaker 2: a highre financial position, their death rates were incredibly highreds
Speaker 2: out of one hundred thousand birds, one one hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy three of the baby is born to the richest
Speaker 2: white mothers died before the first birthday. Whereas four hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty seven babies born to the richest black mothers died,
Speaker 2: So that's that number is just incredibly higher. And then
Speaker 2: black babies have the highest mortality rate in all of America.
Speaker 2: And this is just for black women only. It doesn't
Speaker 2: include any other people of color, not Hispanic or anything
Speaker 2: like that. And so there is there seems to be
Speaker 2: a huge bias against black women specifically. And this makes
Speaker 2: me wonder also if in this case this could have
Speaker 2: played a role on why marsh was sent home from
Speaker 2: the hospital in the first place after going in for pain.
Speaker 2: Could this entire or they old have been prevented if
Speaker 2: she had been given better medical care that wasn't biased
Speaker 2: against her race.
Speaker 1: I think that when I was reading the article, I
Speaker 1: want to say they use the term approximate cause for
Speaker 1: her being labeled as the cause of this death. And
Speaker 1: I are going to get in the debate over childhood
Speaker 1: on this and the reason am is the mother retained
Speaker 1: the ashes. So for their sake, if they want to
Speaker 1: call them a child, it's a child for the sake
Speaker 1: of a discussion and because that's what it meant to them.
Speaker 1: But when it comes down to South Carolina and their
Speaker 1: need to assert a blame somewhere. There's definitely blame. I mean,
Speaker 1: as you said, Aja, coming home, this woman coming home
Speaker 1: from the hospital, she was completely dismissed. And I can't
Speaker 1: help but wonder if she would have been a white woman,
Speaker 1: would she have gotten the same dismissal. The statistics say maybe,
Speaker 1: maybe not because we see them too. But the bottom
Speaker 1: line is it's hard to ignore that a black woman's
Speaker 1: two point five times more likely to die from pregnancy
Speaker 1: and childbirth, and that with that number rising, So yes,
Speaker 1: there's plenty to blame, blame to lay around. And you know,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, I believe carod to you before this
Speaker 1: show started. You know, driving while black is a thing,
Speaker 1: and it's bad enough right now, it seems we need
Speaker 1: to deal with pregnant while black too, because this isn't
Speaker 1: something that's going to go away. But I have to
Speaker 1: wonder if this isn't something that is specific to a
Speaker 1: general dismissal women, because that's a lot of what this
Speaker 1: tends to be is it just seems to be putting
Speaker 1: them in a second class place. What do you think, Kara, Oh, one.
Speaker 3: Hundred percent agree. I know we've talked on this show
Speaker 3: previously about all of the ways that going to a
Speaker 3: hospital or a doctor while being a woman is a
Speaker 3: dangerous endeavor or one in which you're more likely to
Speaker 3: be ignored or dismissed or labeled as having a mental
Speaker 3: health issue for thinking that you have a physical health issue,
Speaker 3: and all of these kinds of things, and then combined
Speaker 3: with being a woman and also a woman who is black,
Speaker 3: now we've got two different intersecting ways in which you're
Speaker 3: going to be treated in a different way than other
Speaker 3: people who are coming into this setting. And that is
Speaker 3: reflected in the outcomes. It's reflected in the maternal health
Speaker 3: of black women, it's reflected in the health outcomes of
Speaker 3: women in general going into a medical facility, their outcomes
Speaker 3: in terms of how long it takes them to get
Speaker 3: diagnosed with things, how much research has been devoted to
Speaker 3: the types of issues that women have specifically, all of
Speaker 3: these issues are combining, and when you look at this
Speaker 3: in a larger context with many of the other laws
Speaker 3: that we have on the books, or have in the
Speaker 3: past had on the books that disproportionately affect certain groups
Speaker 3: of people, it's hard to not see the pattern when
Speaker 3: you see these abortion laws happening in states that also
Speaker 3: have a history of having laws that are going to
Speaker 3: restrict people from voting, and those laws tend to restrict
Speaker 3: certain demographics from being able to vote, the same states
Speaker 3: that have had certain ordinances and laws on the books
Speaker 3: that have caused disproportionate disadvantages to accrue to people of
Speaker 3: certain socioeconomic and racial categories in terms of their access
Speaker 3: to even be near a hospital, or have transportation to
Speaker 3: a hospital, or access to any other kind of thing
Speaker 3: that people might need. These are just piling one on
Speaker 3: top of the other and compounding these problems, and it's
Speaker 3: having the same effect. Again, I don't think it's a
Speaker 3: surprising effect. I think anyone who is paying attention knew
Speaker 3: this would be the outcome of this, and here we
Speaker 3: are seeing it. And I don't think that it was
Speaker 3: an unintended outcome. Maybe I'm a pessimist, but that's what
Speaker 3: I see.
Speaker 2: Aj Anything you had ad You have mentioned this before, Infidel,
Speaker 2: but I think it, Parson be Bitn. If men were
Speaker 2: able to get pregnant, we will be having a completely
Speaker 2: different conversation.
Speaker 1: I don't disagree, and I've said that if men got
Speaker 1: pregnant and I use that term directly, but I would
Speaker 1: say that the birth control pill would have been invented
Speaker 1: before the wheel, you know, that'd have been the first thing.
Speaker 1: And we'd have a lottery every year, and whoever lost
Speaker 1: would have the kid that year. So we'd have about
Speaker 1: one hundred people and just barely holding on to survival.
Speaker 1: So I completely agree what truth is is that we'd have,
Speaker 1: you know, make abortion clinics are around, because it just
Speaker 1: wouldn't be this way. But I will say that I
Speaker 1: do agree. I'm a little pessimistic, like you, Kara. I
Speaker 1: think this is a deliberate I don't think this is accidental.
Speaker 1: I think this has opened a lot of people's eyes
Speaker 1: because they used to say, oh, this is just one
Speaker 1: of many, and this doesn't really happen. This is just
Speaker 1: excuses you use for what could happen if we made
Speaker 1: abortion illegal. Well now we're seeing those and they're very
Speaker 1: real consequences, and they count and they matter because as
Speaker 1: rare or not, they're people behind them.