| A couple days before I was scheduled to interview Irin Carmon about her new book, Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America, ProPublica published a story identifying another victim of our broken healthcare system: Tierra Walker. The 37-year-old Texas mother had asked her doctor, “Wouldn’t you think it would be better for me to not have the baby?” after her early pregnancy symptoms included “unexplained seizures” and “soaring blood pressure,” ProPublica reported. But no one would help her. They let her die from preeclampsia, one of the leading causes of maternal death worldwide.
I asked Irin Carmon what went through her mind as she read about what happened to Tierra Walker, particularly since her case echoed other cases Irin had reported on over the past 15 years. She noted the recent viral videos of two Black pregnant women, Mercedes Wells and Kiara Manuel, who had been ignored and belittled by hospital staff before adding, “Tierra Walker did everything that she was supposed to do. She advocated for her own care, she showed up, she asked questions, she followed doctor’s orders, she understood what she needed, and she asked for it.” But it wasn’t enough to save her own life.
Patients are facing these burdens every day, Irin added. “One of the things that I write about in Unbearable is how much the system demands that you, at a time when you might be in labor or very sick, advocate for yourself. But there is also a catch- 22, particularly for Black women, and there’s research that shows this: In advocating for yourself, you might be retaliated against…. So doing all the things that you are supposed to do will not save you.”
Irin explores how we got here in her new book, which profiles five women and their experiences with pregnancy care in the United States. Importantly, Irin weaves in our nation’s history of reproductive care to show how Dobbs—the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022—is a culmination of this history in many ways. “Without understanding the deep racist roots of American reproductive medicine, we find ourselves surprised again and again that this keeps happening,” Irin told me.
You can read my conversation with Irin here. New Yorkers can catch an in-person conversation between the author and The Nation’s national affairs correspondent Joan Walsh on December 9.
In solidarity,
Regina Mahone
Senior Editor |
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