The Role of Unconscious Bias in Black Women’s Pregnancy Risks
Shakima Tozay was 37 years old and six months pregnant when a nurse, checking the fetal heart rate of the baby boy she was carrying, referred to him as “a hoodlum.”Ms. Tozay, a social worker, froze. She had just been hospitalized at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Wash., with pre-eclampsia, a life-threatening complication of pregnancy, and she is Black.“A ‘hoodlum’?” she said. “Why would you call him that?”The fetus was 14 inches long and weighed little more than a box of chocolates.A doctor who came into the room downplayed the comment, saying the nurse was just kidding, but that…
