Why are black mothers and infants far more likely to die in U.S. from pregnancy-related causes?

Linda Villarosa:

So, when you hear the word stress, you kind of think of, oh, I feel really stressed out, or I just need to kind of take a chill pill or relax.

But, really, toxic stress is the result of aggressions that happen to you and insults that happen to you, and, in this case, race-related. It can be everything from, I feel that I’m treated differently, people think I’m less intelligent, to, I am being discriminated against by the police in housing and in my workplace.

And those actually — it’s been proven that those have a physical effect on the body, because every time you get stressed out in this way, and if it happens repeatedly, all of your systems fire up. And if your systems continually fire up, they break down.

And weathering is the idea that you, your body — because of these repeated insults and this repeated firing up the system, the body ages prematurely. And so — and it’s not on the outside. I mean, it could be, but it’s on the inside.

And that all comes to a head during what is essentially a stress test of a woman’s body, and that is pregnancy and childbirth.