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Tennessee’s Infant Mortality Rate and the Lie of “Pro-Life”

Aunt B

So, our 2009 Tennessee Women’s Health Report Card came out last week and, needless to say, we didn’t do so well. We’ve been hoping to see some shift in our infant mortality rate, which remains abysmal.  We have in five years lowered it from 9.4 per 1,000 to 8.3 per 1,000, but the African American community continues to suffer from an infant mortality rate of 16.4 per thousand.

There has been excellent coverage for the past year or so about the infant mortality rate in Memphis (though I feel I should warn you that, if you start Googling for it, you will see pictures of caskets so tiny that you will gasp out loud and want to cry), with the latest being this story in today’s Tennessean.

There’s a lot to unpack in that story, but I want to touch on just a few things.  One, there seems to be no discussion about how our sex ed curriculum(s) have utterly failed a large segment of our population. Women have scarily little accurate information on how to experience our own bodies as for us and not for the pleasure and entertainment of others, we don’t know how to use birth control or even get hold of it, and, in the cases of young girls who end up pregnant, we don’t talk about the ages or character of the men who got them that way.

Two, look at how much blame is put on the women.  If my math is right, and Judy Golden is 23 now, and her daughter died two years ago, that means Golden had four pregnancies (Brooklyn, the two miscarriages, and the living child she references) before she was 21. She lost at least one pregnancy because of domestic violence. And she feels to blame for losing Brooklyn because she didn’t eat right?

I mean, come the fuck on. Being able to eat right is way down on the list of problems Golden has. What about being able to be safe from violence in her own house? What about being able to control when she gets pregnant? What about not being blamed for her personal tragedies by the medical professionals who are supposed to help her?

Women in my state live in grinding poverty. We tolerate a lot of violence, often because we’ve been taught and have it reinforced every Sunday that violence is our lot. We’re not taught about our bodies or protected from predators because, again, if we don’t want to have kids, we should just keep our legs shut.  It’s slut shaming and fat shaming and women blaming all in one ugly mess that results in our suffering the loss of our children.

And again, it’s that racism that bites white people in the butts.  Because do I even have to tell you?

Once the face of infant mortality became Memphis, infant mortality in our state became a problem Black people have. Oh, those people in Memphis who just can’t get their acts together, those people in the projects in Nashville who just can’t get their acts together.  You know how it works.

And so, as much as folks are working very hard to lower the infant mortality rate in this state, there’s a whole lot of passive resistance in the form of “eh, what can you do? You know how those people are.” So, you know, we’re pro-life, except when it’s hard or when we might help a lot of suffering black women.

I don’t even have to tell you the kicker, though, do I?

Here’s a map of infant mortality rates in the state of Tennessee by county. Memphis may have the most infant deaths in the state, but Memphis is also our most populated city. You take a look at those counties where the infant mortality rate is above 13 per 1,000 and you can see that the communities suffering the most are poor, rural, mostly white communities.

This kind of intersection of racism and classism is hard to talk about and I do a poor job (though I am of the school that says a poor job is better than no job at all).  But I look at that map and I read what people say about infant mortality in our state and how they try to frame it as a Memphis problem. And I think about how that racism is hurting the white people in those counties.

I don’t know how you get that across to people, that, though they are often used as the poster-children of scary white racism–the Southern Redneck–,the racist power structure has no compunction about letting them suffer in order to make sure that black people also suffer.  But it could not be clearer that this is the case, when you look at that map.

33 thoughts on Tennessee’s Infant Mortality Rate and the Lie of “Pro-Life”

  1. OMG I’m posting on Feministe. I hope I don’t give y’all cooties. Anyway…

    I’m very glad that you posted this, because it brings up something I’ve been trying to explain to my white Memphis peers for a long time — if you live in a black community, traditionally black issues become your issues, too. Institutional racism affects entire cities and neighborhoods regardless of the color purity of every individual inhabitant. When the folks in Nashville decide that it’s time to take a crap on Memphis, we all get hit with it.

    There’s a mental barrier I encounter when I try to get this across to people, and I wonder if it’s the same phenomena that keeps many males from taking up women’s issues as their own, even though men are far more likely to be affected by them than whites are by black issues.

  2. I am so happy to see so much coverage of Appalachia on Feministe lately. Americans tend to dismiss that region of our country, when we think of it at all. It’s easy, because popular culture and the MSM give us plenty of ugly stereotypes to make Appalachians seem worthy of their fate. We are given the Red Neck (a term which refers to unionized miners in West Virginia who fought for their rights while wearing red bandannas), the Hill Billy (a term assigned to Scots-Irish immigrants to Appalachia because so many of them were named “William”) , White Trash (for the white people), and much worse for the black people.

    We see the image of the toothless, inbred hick, with a low IQ, the men quick-tempered, the women always pregnant and overweight.

    We learn that it is their own fault they are this way, and therefore we have both permission to laugh at their chosen depravity, and permission to ignore their grinding poverty.

    Thank you Aunt B for bothering to delve deeper than the garbage we are usually fed about the people of Appalachia.

  3. I don’t have anything insightful to add. I just wanted to say that this post and your last one are really speaking to me. Keep ’em coming!

  4. I have nothing much to add except: Thank you for this blunt, intelligent response to a serious problem Aunt B.

    I don’t know how you get that across to people, that, though they are often used as the poster-children of scary white racism–the Southern Redneck–,the racist power structure has no compunction about letting them suffer in order to make sure that black people also suffer. But it could not be clearer that this is the case, when you look at that map.

    THIS. Especially this.

  5. My sister died of anencephaly in 1972 – my mother was 23, and yes, this would have been her third child, a fact that would now classify her as “one of those women” who deserve to have such things happen to them. However, outside of being a little overweight, my mother had none of the other risk factors. She did not have high blood pressure or diabetes. She was not undernourished (and I’ll admit this was before folic acid was known to be so important, but we ate very healthy food). The father was in the picture, and she had a wonderful support system in her mother. She had two other completely healthy children. So, to see that the doctors told this woman that it was her fault, and folic acid deficiency was to blame (apparently without question) makes my heart hurt for her. It could have been her diet, and it could have been the roll of the dice.

    In 1972, my mother was forced to carry the baby to term – and she nearly bled to death as a result. She was forced to bury her daughter in one of those tiny caskets, rather than have the abortion that would have spared her at least THAT pain. At 60, my mother says it is the one part of her life that can still make her cry. Yes, my mother was poor (and white, I’d like to add), but she got a college degree and raised two children who turned into fine adults (my brother is a successful family man, and I am a library director).

    What happened to my sister was not my mother’s “fault,” and I think it’s shameful the way this country treats its women and its poor.

  6. Oh, Jessica, I’m so sorry to hear about your mother’s loss. It is scary to realize that in almost forty years, there are women in this country who still go through what she went through.

    Autoegocrat, cooties?! Is that what these are? Whew, I thought the cats had brought in fleas.

    Thank y’all for the kind words, too. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, too, and I wonder if the high infant mortality rates in these counties don’t play into the extreme anti-abortion sentiment you’d also find there. I haven’t ever heard of anyone drawing that connection and I’m just talking out my ass to wonder about it, but in communities where keeping babies alive until their first birthday is so difficult, is it any wonder that abortion is viewed so negatively?

    You see that in abortion discussions sometimes, where a woman will talk about how she miscarried or she can’t have kids and how women who have abortions are selfish. I’ve always experienced that line of argument really gross, like your problems give you the right to commandeer someone else’s body?

    But I wonder what that’s like for a whole, close-knit, religious community to experience infant death after infant death. Is there some sense of “If you can have a baby that might live you must, because so many of ours didn’t”? You see what I’m getting at here? For all this talk of the rugged American individual, I wonder if there isn’t a sense that women MUST have babies if they can, in response to the continued losses of the community?

    I don’t know. Hopefully someone smarter than me will come by and have some thoughts about it.

  7. And just to clarify, I don’t think that’s any excuse for stripping a woman of her right to reproductive freedom. I’m just wondering about that dynamic, not accepting it as a justification.

  8. I don’t know how you get that across to people, that, though they are often used as the poster-children of scary white racism–the Southern Redneck–,the racist power structure has no compunction about letting them suffer in order to make sure that black people also suffer. But it could not be clearer that this is the case, when you look at that map.

    You are awesome, Aunt B… and what you have said is absolutely true.

    And as you well know, that map could be my state also.

  9. Thank you for covering this. I live in Nashville and have lived in Memphis. When I try to talk to outsiders about our states and its particular racial and socioeconomic issues I get a lot of blank stares.

    The map is interesting to me. I have to wonder how they assigned the deaths to each county, looking at the ones with 0.0. Cheatham County, for example is 0.0. There is dire poverty living right up against extreme wealth there (there has been a lot of gentrification in that county in the last 20 years) so I refuse to believe there is actually 0.0 there. It makes me wonder if they are only counting deaths that occur in/are reported to hospitals? People in that county would normally go to Davidson County for hospital care since (to my knowledge and a quick Google) there are no major hospitals there. This also makes me wonder how on earth the people who live up the road from my brother in Pegram (the poorest city in that county) who don’t have cars or money and only recently got a sewer system would even get medical care in the event of a problem pregnancy. My guess is that they don’t and those deaths do not get reported.

    I notice the same statistic in Perry County, one of the poorest counties in the state. They also got 0.0. But neighboring Hickman county gets 14.0? The demographics are both counties are pretty similar (I have family from both), and there are hospitals in both counties. Why the stark difference? Just seems odd to me. And makes me thinks the statistics in Perry County must be much worse than reported.

  10. Right back atcha, Daisy!

    FreshPeaches, I think there are a couple of things going on–one of which I’m glad you brought up because I hadn’t thought about it. 1.) The infant mortality rate is by year. So, I think you could have counties with sufficiently low populations where all the factors were the same and if only, say, 50 babies (that would have been the size of my high school graduating class, for instance) were born in each county that year, one county could be unlucky enough to have five deaths one year and the other lucky enough to have none. I think to get a true idea of the scope of the problem, you’d have to figure out a longer time frame in which to watch it. I would expect these low population counties to wildly fluctuate from year to year.

    But 2.) Are they taking into account how few hospitals we have? I mean, think of Memphis. Are those infant mortality rates infants whose mothers live in Memphis or infants who died in Memphis? Because Memphis is the major metropolitan hub for North Mississippi, Eastern Arkansas, West Tennessee, Western Kentucky, and the boot-heel of Missouri. A LOT of women come to Memphis to give birth, especially if there’s any chance that their births are high risk (and clearly being the major metropolitan area for that area, you’re going to have a lot of high risk pregnancies, because there are a lot of women who don’t get adequate medical care). So you are likely to see a lot more just-born baby deaths, in cases like that.

  11. Aunt B. – in reply to your awesome point about anti-abortion sentiments and infant mortality rates being high:

    I think this could easily be turned around to make it that if people were really “pro-life” than they would fight more for those infants (i.e. another point about how such “pro-life” people are hypocrites). However I guess by people I mean those condemning abortion and not apart of poverty stricken communities (say for example, potentially those that work at crisis pregnancy centers). However I think this is one example of why there needs to be more of a dialogue between pro-choice/reproductive justice advocates and those working for change in the realm of woman centered maternity care/midwives. Having choices and accessibility to honest and caring care in pregnancy/childbirth has been stated as a common ground, but I don’t think picked up well enough by “pro-choice” advocates outside of such communities.

  12. Thanks for the post. You’re right; classism is becoming as bad – or worse – than racism. I’m now far-removed from Memphis (“I was born and raised in Memphis, and finally fled in my 30’s to quit being raised”, as I like to say – I’m sure you understand), but because I’ve now embraced (WHOLEHEARTEDLY) a highly non-materialistic lifestyle, much of my family looks down on ME more than they do them thar brown-skinned people (most of my family is HIGHLY racist).

    I find the statistics linked to highly questionable. a ZERO infant mortality rate in Lake? *Hardeman*? *Jackson”? Clay? Those seem like cooked-up numbers to me.

    Memphis – a great place to be FROM.

  13. Just to be clear, I don’t think that classism is “as bad” or “worse” than racism. They’re two complimentary systems for keeping people without power from having power. Comparing them is a fool’s errand. It’s like two people get punched in the face and then try to figure out who got punched harder. Who cares? Who’s the motherfucker running around punching people in the face?

    You know what I’m saying?

  14. Yes, Aunt B, I do. I posted in a hurry and didn’t choose my words wisely. I apologize.

    Let’s just say I have certain relatives and acquaintances who’ve made a life of cheating on spouses, scamming money from others (including ME), using the cover of a cult to destroy people ‘legitimately’ – all things beyond my comprehension – but consider me the “lowest of the low” because I spend more hours doing volunteer work for people they consider “immoral” than I do working for pay.

    IMNSHO, “classism” IS the “new racism.”

  15. What does that even mean Keith? That racism is gone, and classism has taken its place? That’s demonstrably false. That classism is “just as oppressive as racism”? If so, why not just say that it’s a particularly prevalent form of oppression? There’s absolutely no need to make the comparison at all unless you’re trying to weigh oppressions against each other. I suppose that you could mean that classism is a means through which racism is enforced, though that’s not the impression I’m getting, but if you did, then why not say what I just said — classism reinforces and intersects with racism?

    Indicating that there is a “new racism” is to imply that the “old racism” — you know, actual racism — is no longer relevant, or less relevant than classism. That is untrue, insulting, and offensive. Also, whatever your intent, “it’s not race, it’s class” is a really common tactic to try to silence people of color and avoid talking about race, and/or to indicate that white folks have it just as bad as POC, so POC just need to shut up.

  16. > I suppose that you could mean that classism is a means through which racism is enforced

    That’s EXACTLY what I meant. I’ve lived in a VERY different world for a decade – one where race is only a minor issue. Kids from dozens of countries and cultures here grow up playing together, learning together, loving together. Interracial marriage is common here. It’s not at all unusual to see a 1/2-dozen kids walking down the street together here – no two of the same race. And no one turns a head or bats an eyelash.

    That’s not to say that racism is nonexistent here – I don’t believe such a place exists. But class is the much more common way in which people are judged here by those who feel the need to judge. HERE, it really is “class, not race”. At least where I’m at today, that doesn’t imply in any way that “…POC just need to shut up.” The thought never even crossed my mind; maybe I’ve been away long enough I just don’t think like a southerner anymore.

    I had no intention of starting a shitstorm here. I seem to be damned if I do, and damned if I don’t, so I’ll just leave. I apologize again for saying anything.

  17. Aunt B, there are a couple of things you said i want to clarify.
    first,when you brought up discussions of abortion by stating that some women who experienced miscarriages looked at those who aborted their babies as selfish, you said the line “like your problems give you the right to commandeer someone else’s body?”. i have heard the dialogue on how pro lifers shouldnt tell women what to do with their bodies, but the mother’s body isnt the only one we’re talking about. how can you treat a pregnant woman as just one body when the unborn, from the moment of conception, have their own dna ( source: In the Womb, National Geographic, 2005)? when after 18 days in the womb their hearts begin to beat blood that in some cases is a different blood type from the mother’s? this isnt religious hype, it’s scienctific evidence, and if you want a list of medical texts that say so, go to [link removed].
    second, you “wonder what that’s like for a whole, close-knit, religious community to experience infant death after infant death. Is there some sense of ‘If you can have a baby that *might* live you must, because so many of ours didn’t’?” I have a problem with the way the unborn is being viewed as a potential life, instead of a living human being. any sonagram will tell you that the baby is living. In fact, from the own mouth of Faye Wattleton, the longest reigning president of the largest abortion provider in the world – Planned Parenthood – “we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don’t know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a fetus.” apparently abortion kills. if you can’t take it from me, take it from the pro-“choice” leader, Ms. Wattleton, or the other prominent abortion supporters, who have similar quotes on the same webpage i cited earlier in my comment, [link removed] .

  18. Shea, fortunately for you, I’m a guest here, or I would spend my morning laughing you off the internet. But since I am a guest here, I’m going to explain it to you. It doesn’t matter if a fetus is a person. Women still should have the right to have abortions.

    Period.

    Women cannot be equal citizens if women cannot control what happens to our bodies.

    What your line of thinking does is to create three classes of citizens: men, who can control what happens to their own bodies, but do not have the right to control other people’s bodies without their consent; “un-born babies,” who seemingly have a right to bodily autonomy and do have the right to control other people’s bodies without their consent (though this right must be exercised by proxy on behalf of the unborn baby); and women, who have no right to bodily autonomy and who do not have the right to control other people’s bodies (even when those bodies are inside them).

    So, I ask you, Shea, how’s your situation “equality”?

  19. a) abortion assures that 650,000 females each year do not have control over their bodies. the cases in which the unborn is a baby girl.

    b) not all things done with a person’s body are right, nor should they all be legally protected.

    c) The question here is whether your right to bodily autonomy allows you to use your body in ways that hurt other bodies. If a man has the right to use his body in whatever way he chooses, even when it touches the body of another, then rape is morally justified. “My body, my choice,” doesnt have such a nice ring to it then.

    d) control over the body can be exercised to prevent pregnancy in the first place, excluding cases of rape, which constitutes roughly 1% of all abortions.

    i can name 7 prominent feminists who stand with me in protesting abortion, and you can find their quotes on
    [link removed]

  20. in fact, i encourage all viewers of this site to go to the above website for a refreshing glance at the views of early feminists on abortion.

  22. what do you have to say to the fact that even the most prominent early feminists such as susan b anthony were pro life?

  23. Shea, you compare women who have abortions to rapists. Either you’re not arguing in good faith, you’re a monster, or you’ve lived a very, very sheltered life.

    Whatever the reason for your approach, it’s really vile and I can’t believe you expect people to actually engage with you.

  24. Actually, from what I understand, Susan B.Anthony opposed abortions because they killed women more often than not, rather than for any religious reason.

  25. when the unborn, from the moment of conception, have their own dna

    Oh, for…possibly the stupidist pro-life argument in existence! Here are a few other things that have their own DNA, distinctly different from that of the host: the unfertilized gametes (oocyte and sperm), the placenta*, tumor cells, and symbiotic or pathologic bacteria and parasites. Ok, even if you discount the last one as not being human DNA, how do you get around the fact that conception destroys two independent living entities with their own DNA? Or that the placenta will be thrown in the trash after delivery? Or that we seek to kill tumors-with extreme prejudice. We have national institutes dedicated to nothing but finding better ways to kill these unique little organisms with their own human DNA! Forget abortion-stop the cancer genocide! (Need I add a sarcasm tag?)

    *Actually, the placenta is a chimeric organism, with DNA of both mother and fetus, so it’s not even possible to argue that tossing it in the trash is ok because the baby will go on living and therefore it’s just an amputation.

  26. we both know thats not true. i was using pro choice logic in another situation to show the logic’s fault.
    and you didnt have to honor what i said there in order to answer my question (which you still haven’t done) about the interesting fact that the women who brought about womens rights fought for the rights of unborn children as well.

    I don’t wish to condemn women who have had abortions, mainly because I dont wish to condemn anyone in the first place, but also because women aren’t informed enough about what abortion does and what their other options are. the fact is, though, that abortion is murder and I think that is what’s vile. our country, women & men alike, you, and I, we all deserve better.

  27. my last comment was in response to aunt b.
    to politicalguineapig,
    “No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed [abortion]. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death;”

    this is part of the quote from susan b anthony that is featured on the page [link removed] that shows her and other foundational leaders’ views.

    she not only talks about consequences in death, something that may be seen as religious, but in conscience as well.

  28. women aren’t informed enough about what abortion does and what their other options are.

    So you are in a better place to tell other women what is good for them, then? Every pregnant woman is less intelligent and informed than you are, and therefore in need of your wisdom and intervention?

  30. So, you’re admitting that you were intending to be as vile as you could be in order to prove your point? This is what gets me about some segments of pro-life people. It always turns into a chance for y’all to indulge your torture porn while you expect the rest of us to go along with it.

    “Let’s imagine that abortion is like rape. Imagine that abortion is like a dude forcing his penis in a woman without her consent.”

    or

    “Let’s imagine those poor chopped up babies. Ooo. All their little chopped up baby parts!”

    And whatever the conversation, your segment of the pro-life movement keeps coming back to that kind of imagery over and over and over again because you get off on it.

    You’re masturbating in public, basically.

    Do you really think that this conversation hasn’t already been had eighty million times on the internet? That you’re contributing something to the discussion that no one here already knows? Just how stupid do you think women are?

    And to that end, that’s why it couldn’t matter less what early feminists thought about abortion. Feminism isn’t about exchanging one set of bosses for another. It’s about giving women the right to determine for ourselves as best as we are able what happens to ourselves.

    Which I suspect you know.

  32. Thanks, Lauren. I wasn’t sure how to do that or if I should.

    On a side note, I just want to say that being able to read all the comments, especially the ones that don’t make it onto the site… well, I thought before this I had respect for what y’all do here, but I had no idea. I don’t really block comments at Tiny Cat Pants, but that’s because I get NOTHING like just the constant stream of ridiculousness y’all get.

    You guys deserve kudos, to put it mildly.

  33. women aren’t informed enough about what abortion does and what their other options are

    Maybe it’s unfair to pick on someone who has already been banned, but I have to say that this is true–but not at all in the way that Shea meant. In many places in the US (possibly other countries as well), doctors and other medical personnel are required to tell patients things that are completely untrue about abortion and what their options are. They may be required to say that abortion causes breast cancer (it doesn’t and may prevent uterine cancer). Or that most women feel depression after an abortion (most feel relief and depression, when it does occur, is most associated with having people around the patient making negative judgements about her decision). Or they may be required to tell women misleading things about the fetus, i.e. that it has a heart beat (true after the embryonic period, but irrelevant: the question is does it have an active cerebral cortex-and the answer is largely no). So Shea is right, in a sense, but the misinformation given is just the opposite of what she was likely claiming.

    On the other hand, women are encouraged or coerced into allowing their baby to be adopted with little information on and sometimes gross misinformation about the adoption process and the consequences of adoption to both the mother and the baby. Birth mothers who place their children for adoption almost always suffer depression, often extended depression. They are sometimes convinced to sign away their parental rights with misleading information. Or have you already posted on this article, to give one example?

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