This story is part of an investigative series and new documentary, The A-Word , by The Independent examining the state of abortion access and reproductive care in the US after the fall of Roe v Wade.
Erica Allen was terrified and in agony last April at a Delaware hospital just before the emergency birth of her fourth child, fully aware of the dangers of being a Black mother in America. She kept thinking about her cousin: a Black doctor who’d collapsed at the mall and died while pregnant two years earlier, losing the son she’d already named Cruz.
“It doesn’t matter how educated you are,” Erica, a nurse and doula, tells The Independent. “It doesn’t matter whether you graduated college, medical school, dropped out … just the color of your skin could impact the outcome.”
Erica’s first birth nearly 20 years ago had been traumatic, too; her body was so swollen with pre-eclampsia as she arrived at the ER at 35 weeks that her own mother didn’t recognize her.
Erica was monitored particularly carefully by her medical team before the 2023 birth of her fourth child, but she was also tracking her own blood pressure. She’d become intimately familiar with her usual levels and noted a concerning rise towards the end of her pregnancy .