Beyonce Opens Up About the Birth of the Twins
In a recent interview with Vogue, Beyonce opened up about the difficulties she faced in childbirth. It sparked a conversation about black women and their higher risk of complications during delivery and pregnancies.
Queen Bey suffered from preeclampsia, which is a pregnancy complication that involves high blood pressure and protein in the urine. On average, it affects about 3.4% of pregnant women in the United States.
Because of this, 36-year-old Beyoncé had been on bed rest for over than a month before having an emergency cesarean section.
According to the World Health Organization, about 830 women around the globe die from preventable issues related to pregnancy and childbirth every day. And about 700 women die each year as a result of pregnancy or delivery complications in the United States.
And the risk for black women is even higher no matter the class or available resources. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the risk of pregnancy-related deaths among black women is three to four times higher than among white women.
Hopefully, the attention to the issue will help hospitals everywhere decrease these statistics and make the child birthing experience for black women as beautiful and safe as it should be.
To have @Beyonce AND @serenawilliams not only LANDING THE COVERS OF @voguemagazine but also opening up about their pregnancy complications as black women within MONTHS of each other is powerful and wild and shows black women maternal morbidity is unkind to so many black moms.
— Marissa 💃🏾 (@marissaaevans) August 6, 2018
Rising senior at St.John’s University, Kayla Smith is an aspiring journalist originally from Baltimore, Maryland.
