New Study Shows That Black Babies Conceived Via Fertility Treatments Have Higher Mortality Rates Than White Babies

Iesha October 20, 2022 News Leave a comment

A new study found that babies born to Black mothers via assisted reproductive technology (ART) are more likely to die as newborns than their white counterparts.

The study’s findings, which covered “all singleton births in the United States from 2016 to 2017,” were published on Tuesday in the American Academy of Pediatrics journal. They revealed that “neonatal mortality was more than four times higher in infants of non-Hispanic Black women” than newborns of white women.

Researchers found that 1.6% of black babies born to black mothers died before they reached 28 days of age, as opposed to 0.3% of ART-conceived babies born to white mothers.

Newborns of Black women had a mortality rate twice as high as those of white women among the group of singletons “in the spontaneous-conception group” (i.e., conceived without ART).

“Racial and ethnic disparities between Hispanic versus non-Hispanic White women were also significantly larger among women who conceived using [medically assisted reproduction] with regard to preterm birth (<34 weeks) and perinatal mortality,” the study also found.

The study’s author also told the media outlet that she was surprised by the findings because, given the cost of the procedures, people who use fertility treatments frequently have access to more financial resources, which might also lead one to believe that access would also include high-quality prenatal and postnatal care.

Dr. Madeline Sutton, an OB-GYN in Atlanta who wasn’t involved in the study, believes the general quality of care may impact how mothers are treated.

“Once that pregnancy happens, the women are in the same system that has all those things that we haven’t yet fully accounted for — the systemic biases, the racism, the differences in treatments based on what type of insurance someone might have,” Sutton told NBC News.

Additionally, a 2020 study found that Black doctors are more likely to save the lives of Black neonates in the United States after childbirth than White doctors, who are three times more likely to lose them.

According to the study written up in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the race of the doctor had no bearing on the mortality rate for white babies.

The researchers said black babies delivered in “more complicated cases” were much more likely to survive with a Black doctor, and this was “strikingly” where the mortality rate dropped the most. Hospitals that deliver more Black newborns also saw a significant reduction in mortality rates.