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Three weeks after Cassaundra Lynn Perkins gave birth to premature twins, she returned to the hospital, feeling unwell. She phoned her mother from her hospital bed at 3:30 in the morning. “I’m just not feeling good,” she said. Surely it was just another bout of the mysterious illness her daughter had been suffering from for most of her pregnancy, Cheryl Givens-Perkins thought as she rushed over to San Antonio’s North Central Baptist Hospital. (Simmons, 10/26)

It wasn’t just the disproportionate number of pregnancy-related deaths among black women in the United States that alarmed Darline Turner when the crisis first hit the headlines. It was the seeming nonchalance surrounding the issue. Why hadn’t the federal government declared this phenomenon a public health emergency, professed it a pressing human rights concern, or ordered a nationwide investigation, wondered Turner, a physician’s assistant and certified doula — a person trained to help women through childbirth and serve as their advocate. (Simmons, 10/26)