Healthcare
Baby Loss
“I know that this debate is not an easy one for those of us participating and for the campaigners, activists and bereaved parents who are listening, but it is nevertheless vital and I am very thankful that it is taking place. I begin by commending all those, including my hon. Friends who have led this debate in the House and beyond, who have found the courage to stand up and speak about their experiences of baby loss. I know from personal experience just how difficult that is to do—to reopen that wound and to relive that pain in public. Every story of baby loss, told or untold, is worthy of our compassion and respect, and I say that because after the occasions when I have shared my own experience, I have been met time and again with questions: how long ago was it, how far along were you and how do you know that racism was a factor? Perhaps some of those questions were asked in innocence, but let me tell you how it made me feel: as if people were measuring my loss, weighing my grief and deciding how much pain I was allowed to feel, and as if there were a scale for sorrow. It is not one-sided. I have spoken to women who, after hearing my experience, have opened up about their own and ended by saying that their experiences were not “as bad” because mine was a late-term stillbirth and theirs was a miscarriage. That broke my heart because it is not true. To all those who experience baby loss in whatever form, your experience matters, your grief matters and your loss matters. That is why Baby Loss Awareness Week is about all forms of pregnancy and baby loss—it is not the loss Olympics. Whether it is an abortion someone had to have, an ectopic pregnancy, an early or late miscarriage, a stillbirth or neonatal death, every single one of those experiences deserves recognition and care. No one—absolutely no one—has the right to quantify your loss. For those of us who have shared our stories, we do not do it for validation or pity; we share them so that others who have endured baby loss know they are not alone, no matter when or how they lost their baby. We share them as a call to action because in a country like ours, the figures surrounding maternal mortality and baby loss should never ever be acceptable. Earlier this year, I led a debate in recognition of Black Maternal Health Awareness Week, during which I highlighted the racial disparity in maternity care and the fact that it has gone down. Black and mixed heritage women are now three times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth, down from five times when I first launched the APPG for black maternal health, and Asian women are twice as likely. Regretfully, this decline is not necessarily something to celebrate, nor is it due to improvements in maternity care for black women. It is because the UK’s overall maternity mortality figures are rising. More women and babies are dying in the UK now than in the last two decades. Black women are likely experiencing even further deterioration. The latest findings from MBRRACE-UK reveal a widening divide in neonatal death rates between the UK’s most and least deprived areas. Black and minority ethnic people are 2.5 times more likely to live in relative poverty and 2.2 times more likely to live in deep poverty. In plain terms, poverty and deprivation are costing newborn lives, so the combination of socioeconomic inequalities and institutional racism has a double impact on black women and their babies’ experiences of maternity care and its outcomes. The data also shows a sharp rise in stillbirths among babies of Asian heritage, and black babies remain twice as likely to be stillborn. Urgent, targeted action is needed to tackle these deaths and health inequalities and prevent avoidable deaths. The new report from the Health and Social Care Committee on black maternal health shows that the outcomes of maternity care are shaped by systemic failings in leadership, training, data collection and accountability. The Secretary of State will know that when the Government promised to find a way forward, I was proud, and when the Government made it a manifesto commitment to set a target to end disparity in maternity care, I was prouder, but this has not happened. The NHS 10-year plan has come and gone without a specific plan for racial disparities in maternity care. If that was not the time to announce a target, when will it be?”
