Allyson Felix wants to ensure that her former relay teammate, Tori Bowie, did not die in vain.
In a first-person essay published by TIME on Thursday, Felix shined a spotlight on what she dubbed “a Black Maternal Health crisis” in the United States, urging both awareness and concrete action in the wake of Bowie’s death due to pregnancy-related complications last month. Felix noted that three of the four women on Team USA’s gold-medal-winning 4×100 relay team at the 2016 Olympics − herself, Bowie and Tianna Madison − went on to have pregnancy-related complications.
“I would love to have another child. That’s something that I know for sure. But will I be here to raise that child? That’s a very real concern,” Felix, who is the most decorated track athlete in U.S. history, told TIME. “And that’s a terrifying thing. This is America, in 2023, and Black women are dying while giving birth. It’s absurd.”
Bowie’s autopsy report, which was released Monday, stated that the three-time Olympic medalist was eight months pregnant and undergoing labor when she died at her Florida home last month. She was 32. The autopsy report listed eclampsia − which causes seizures following a spike in blood pressure during pregnancy − as a possible complication that contributed to her death.
Felix is familiar with eclampsia; she was diagnosed with severe preeclampsia before giving birth to her daughter, Camryn, in 2018.
In the TIME essay, she cited a statistic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which indicated that in 2021 the maternal mortality rate of Black women was more than twice that of white women.
“Awareness is huge,” Felix told TIME. “Serena Williams had near-death complications during her pregnancy. Beyoncé developed preeclampsia. I hate that it takes Tori’s situation to put this back on the map and to get people to pay attention to it. But oftentimes, we need that wake-up call.”
Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on Twitter @Tom_Schad.
