Jane Crow

Women’s eNews is using the term Jane Crow to describe the specific practices, laws and customs that constrict the lives of U.S. women of African descent.

Our current focus in this series is the extraordinarily high maternal mortality rate among African American women. As of this writing, Women’s eNews is not aware of any significant research that even attempts to explain why African American women die three-to-four times more often than white women due to pregnancy or related complications. This has been true since at least 1915 and it has not changed in the seven years we have been reporting the story.