The Price of a Mother’s Life
Black maternal mortality in New York impacts entire families.
By Sarah Karpati
Battling rain and winds, friends, family, and activists gathered in front of St. John’s Hospital last Saturday to protest the quality of maternity care Tenisha Evan received, which her family claims led to her death.
Evans, 24, a Black woman, died after what her mother says was medical neglect and mismanagement of Evans’ care by St. John’s staff, who sent her home after delivering her twin boys.
The family organized the protest in partnership with the grassroots organization Movement to Birth Liberation NY, founded by Katy Cecen. Cecen, a former midwife at SUNY Downstate, chose to focus on a career in activism after resigning as a midwife in protest of the patient care conditions.
Jose Perez, who lost his fiance, Christine Fields, in 2024 after a c-section at NYC Health + Hospitals Woodhull, was also in attendance, lending his support and voice to Evans’ family. A self-identified activist since Fields' death, Perez is now raising their three children as a single father. He honors Fields by lobbying for the passage of the Grieving Families Act in New York State.
Governor Hochul vetoed The Grieving Families Act for a third time on December 21st, 2024, citing the potential for “higher costs to patients and consumers, as well as other unintended consequences.”
This act would have amended a 150-year-old statute, which only allows families to recover compensation for the loss of an individual’s potential earnings based on their salary history in the case of a wrongful death, like medical malpractice.
As it stands, families of wrongful death victims are not able to recover compensation for their emotional anguish and, in Perez’s case, the emotional toll of losing a beloved partner and mother to his children.
In 2022, Black women earned 65.4 cents for every dollar earned by a White man, compared to the 82.7 cents earned by White women. Due to this inequality, the current wrongful death statute inevitably makes a black woman’s life cost a hospital less than their white counterpart.
New York is 1 of only 5 states with this rule.
Out of those five states, New York had more than double the live births in 2022, with approximately 28,000 live births by black mothers.
Between 2016-2021 18.5 % of live births were to black mothers according to New York’s Maternal Mortality Committee.
Between those same years, black women also made up 43.6% of maternal deaths.
The law as it stands, combined with income inequalities because of their race and gender and a high maternal death rate for black mothers, leaves their families not only more likely to lose a loved one, but also the most likely to receive the least amount of financial compensation compared to other groups.
Disappointed, Perez has not given up on getting the Grieving Families Act passed and remains an outspoken activist regarding maternal mortality.
“I never thought I was going to be standing in front of the news,” said Perez, referring to his newfound presence as an activist. “I always shied away from that. But I'm going to keep fighting for justice and I'm going to keep continuing to do what I do.”
Sarah Karpati is a journalist and student at Columbia Journalism School.