Aftershock, 2022.
Directed by Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee.
SYNOPSIS:
Follows two bereaved fathers who galvanise activists, birth-workers, and physicians to reckon with the U.S. maternal health crisis after losing their partners due to preventable childbirth complications.
Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee’s shattering documentary Aftershock features a quote that’ll likely stick with you for days – “Black lives matter, but Black wombs create Black lives,” says the mother of a young woman killed by medical negligence after giving birth.
We’ve seen so many undeniably necessary documentaries in the last few years about the challenges stacked against Black existence on a daily basis – most often from the police – but this new film considers racism from an entirely different angle that’s no less disturbing.
Aftershock examines both the extremely concerning incidence of maternal mortality in the American health care system, and how this disproportionately affects Black women. The film focuses on the stories of Shamony Gibson and Amber Rose Isaac, two young Black women who died due to birthing complications which could’ve been remedied or prevented had medical staff paid them sufficient attention.
Eiselt and Lee catch up with Gibson and Isaac’s bereft partners, Omari Maynard and Bruce McIntyre, who attempt to raise awareness about the oft-ignored notion of medical racism, and the American healthcare system’s deference towards excessive C-section deliveries.
First and foremost, there’s a dignified anger dripping from every pore of this doc and its subjects, justified rage that these pregnant women were failed by the people and institutions established to protect them, leaving behind a gaping hole of loss for their partners, their wider family, and the children they’ve given birth to.
Maynard and McIntyre meet up and, in moving scenes, bond over their shared anguish, while pursuing legal avenues to fight back, find accountable parties, and ensure the system is forever changed to prevent more unnecessary death.
Eiselt and Lee do a remarkable job of melding human interest stories with deeply discomforting facts sure to embed themselves deep in your brain. To name just two: the maternal mortality rate for Black women is four-fold than for white women with the same symptoms, and the United States has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world.
The filmmakers argue that one of the primary culprits is the American medical system’s over-eagerness to perform C-sections even when it’s not strictly necessary – because it’s both quicker and cheaper than a vaginal birth, and hospitals are able to charge more money for it. And so, a persuasive picture forms that women’s lives, and an over-the-odds number of Black women at that, are being sacrificed by an uncaring, dollar-chasing healthcare structure.
Between the posited belief that entrenched racism makes medical staff less likely to believe the concerns of Black pregnant women and even find their Black male partners “threatening,” it’s easy to see the over-incidence of preventable Black death as just another branch of white supremacy. In one horrifying moment, a doctor even reveals that a hospital algorithm predicts Black women as less likely to survive their pregnancy than white women.
Aftershock links this “subtler” form of racism back to the beginnings of gynecology, a pervasively white male practise which has used Black women as guinea pigs since its inception, their bodies being experimented upon to further scientific advancement. There’s also a deep-dive into the history of midwifery, a traditionally Black profession in its infancy, yet one which was effectively de-legitimised by the white medical system until they could whitewash it and shun the Black women on which it was built. Today, the film tells us, 87% of midwives are white.
Eiselt and Lee’s doc may not be the most technically finessed or elegant, but does it really need to be? The gruelling interviews with both those forever changed by grief and a wide array of experts provide crucial, crushing context for one of America’s worst societal ills, and one all the worse because it’s being so thoroughly glossed over by mainstream society.
While it remains to be seen if the wider, national issue can be solved with time, there are at least moving slivers of progress by doc’s end. The creation of reasonably-priced private birthing centers which allow mothers to naturally birth their children without being rushed through C-sections, and fostering a culture of greater communication among hospital staff are encouraging steps, even if rooting out something so fundamentally ingrained in the system, and perhaps in America itself, is incredibly difficult.
Aftershock is a brutal-but-vital document of the ultimate consequences of medical racism and America’s deeply troubling maternal mortality epidemic.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more film rambling.
