Name: Agatha Uglesich

Social Justice Group: Health: Maternal Death Rate in NYC (C)

Date of Fieldwork: February 5, 2025

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Chrissy Sample

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork:

On February 5th, Paige and I interviewed Chrissy Sample through Zoom. Chrissy Sample is a mom of two boys who lives in Brooklyn, NY. Chrissy had her first child before the pandemic; he is 12 years old. During the pandemic, Chrissy became pregnant with twins. When you are pregnant with multiple children, you are required to see your doctor twice a week. However, with Chrissy, her doctor’s appointments were not beneficial. Chrissy told us that her doctor’s bedside manner was rude and indifferent. When Chrissy would ask a question about her health, the doctor would say, “It’s all relative.” Chrissy told us she had no idea what this meant, but the doctor would not explain anything to her. Chrissy told us that she did not want to initially jump to the conclusion that she was being discriminated against, but eventually, it became clear that that was the case. Chrissy said that she began to feel neglected by her doctor but there was nothing she could do because the entire world was dealing with a highly infectious virus. She could not change doctors and she could not receive proper prenatal care.

Chrissy also discussed the cost of having a baby in the United States. Paige and I were both shocked that it could cost up to 40 thousand dollars to give birth. Insurance will cover most of this cost, but you are still left with 3 to 5 thousand dollars in debt to the hospital. Even if money is not an issue, access may be. Women need proper prenatal, birthing, and postpartum care, which is not offered and is accessible everywhere, especially in less wealthy areas.

We discussed so many issues over our 40-minute interview that were helpful to our research and provided a lot of insight into our topic. We closed the interview by asking Chrissy, “How can we help?”. She told us the most important thing we can do is keep learning, build a community, and then educate the community. If we can teach more people about these stereotypes and the stigma involved, it will bring more awareness. Our conversation was extremely heavy and taught us the importance of having everyone tell their story.