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COURIER L 18 IFE, AUGUST 14-20, 2020
‘Leveling the
playing fi eld’
Pre-term labor bill penned in
memory of pol’s son looks to end
mistreatment of Black women
BY ROSE ADAMS
A new maternal health bill expected
to be signed by the governor would require
all hospitals to care for women
in pre-term labor, a life-saving practice
that many Black women are systemically
denied — including the bill’s sponsor.
“I went to the top doctors, I went
to a top medical hospital, and still I
was treated awful. I was treated awful
throughout the whole journey,” said
Rodneyse Bichotte, a Flatbush assemblywoman
who lost her newborn baby
in 2016 days after being denied pre-term
labor care. “This bill hopefully will
wake everybody up and really address
the disparities in Black maternal care
and Black infant care.”
Bichotte went into labor fi ve-and-ahalf
months into her pregnancy in 2016,
but her doctors at NewYork Presbyterian/
Columbia University Medical Hospital
refused to admit her, claiming that
her insurance would not cover her preterm
labor care, she said.
“The doctor and the resident at Columbia
Medical Center said that because
of hospital policies, there was no
room for me if I wish not to terminate
my child,” Bichotte said in an emotional
speech to the state Assembly in July.
“They also indicated that I needed to
leave because they needed the room for
another patient.”
Doctors at the Manhattan hospital
also dismissed Bichotte’s pain when she
arrived with the life-threatening complication,
and did not believe she was in
premature labor until an exam revealed
that she was three-and-a-half centimeters
dilated, she told Brooklyn Paper.
“They said, ‘The baby’s fi ne.’ So then
they checked, and that’s when they saw
they said I was dilating,” she said.
In need of urgent care, Bichotte was
admitted to Wyckoff Hospital in Bushwick
that same day. Seven days later,
she gave birth to her son, Jonah Bichotte
Cowan, who died just hours later.
Bichotte’s experience at Columbia
Hospital is not uncommon among Black
women, who suffer disproportionately
from pregnancy complications and
are eight to 12 times more likely than
white women to die in childbirth in New
York City. Even college-educated Black
women like Bichotte are more likely to
Flatbush Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte.
Photo by Caroline Ourso
suffer near-fatal births than non-Black
women without a college degree, a 2016
study found.
Central to the mistreatment of Black
women is a lack of empathy, according
to Bichotte, who lost Jonah’s twin just
months before she lost Jonah — and
yet, the traumatic experience failed to
inspire any sympathy in her Columbia
Hospital doctors, she said.
“Sometimes there’s no sympathy …
There was no time for anybody to talk
to me, no time for anybody to cry,” she
said. “They said, ‘Keep it moving.'”
Bichotte, who also heads the Brooklyn
Democratic Party, initially introduced
the bill, dubbed the Jonah Bichotte
Cowan law, in 2018. She pushed
for its passage recently in light of the
deaths of black women Sha-Asia Washington
and Amber Isaac, she said.
“This is why I have created this supporting
legislation which would fi nally
level the playing fi eld so that all mothers
can enjoy the experience of pregnancy
and birth of their children,” she told the
Assembly.
The law, which mandates that doctors
monitor women in pre-term labor
and provide them with information
about the health effects, sailed through
the state Assembly and Senate in July,
and will likely be signed by Gov. Andrew
Cuomo.
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