Olympic gold medalist’s death speaks volumes about maternal health crisis: Report

The recent death of track and field star Tori Bowie is yet another example of how the U.S. is failing to keep up with other developed nations in terms of maternal health, according to a Wall Street Journal report June 15. Such perilous outcomes are particularly high among Black women, the report said.

Thirty-two-year-old Ms. Bowie, who won the gold medal at the Rio Olympics in 2016 in the 4×100 meter relay, died May 2 at eight months pregnant, with respiratory distress and eclampsia noted in an autopsy report.

The maternal mortality crisis has surged to its highest in decades, according to the report. While other developed nations’ mortality rates have been in decline, such rates in the U.S. rose nearly 80 percent between 2000 and 2020, according to the article. For Black women, the rate is 2.6 times the rate for white women.

“It’s a state of national emergency,” Abdulla Al-Khan, MD, director of maternal-fetal medicine and surgery at Hackensack (N.J.) University Medical Center, told the Journal.