Assisted dying on pregnancy

Lord Falconer, a sponsor of the bill, was brought to task during the House of Lords committee stage last week. He faced amendments on pregnancy and pushback from peers, including Tanni Grey-Thompson. She implored Falconer to provide more information and reassurance that pregnant people would be protected from assisted dying.

In response, Falconer said:

It is clear from the choice that I am supporting that we take the view that pregnancy should not be a bar to it.

So essentially, at this stage of the bill, pregnant people who are terminally ill or sick and denied treatment could seek to legally end their lives.

Women of colour already treated worse during pregnancy

This is a vile enough revelation, but it’s even scarier for women of colour who are already at increased risk during pregnancy.

A study published in The Lancet found that Black women died three times more than white women during pregnancy or up to six weeks after giving birth. This is known as maternal death. White women were only at risk if they were poorer, whereas being poor only further increased the risk for Black women.

The study says:

After taking account of age, socioeconomic status and multiple pregnancy, this risk was still 2.4 times higher and after taking account of smoking, BMI, parity, pre-existing medical conditions, and diabetes the risk was still 3.1-fold higher than women in the White aggregate ethnic group.

In this same study, Asian women had a 34% increased risk of maternal death. After adjusting for socioeconomic status, the risk for most Asian women resolved. However, there was still an “elevated risk” for Indian women.

The study points out, though, that these factors are not the reason for risk, as the risk of death is clearly there regardless:

Therefore, whilst these demographic, medical and pregnancy risk factors contribute to increased risk of maternal mortality in women of Black and Asian ethnic origin, they do not account for the overall increased risk found.

It’s racism, not risk factors

So if it’s not underlying factors, what is it? Well, as usual, it’s just good old racism

The study says:

Whilst confidential enquiries into maternal death by different ethnic group in the UK did not identify any assessed difference in quality of care, multiple areas of bias such as lack of nuanced care and microaggressions differentially affected women from minority ethnic groups

Another study on the experiences of South Asian women found that many women of that ethnic background were treated differently from other patients. A huge problem many from that background faced was a lack of accessible information in their first language.

Just 2% of Afghan women said information was available in their native language. 89% of Afghan women also had issues attending prenatal appointments. Further to this only 50% of the women in the study felt they were appropriately supported during childbirth, with just 36% of Nepali women saying so.

Black women left in pain or to die

Whilst those study looked at pregnancy on the whole, others have looked at death whilst giving birth and found it’s even bleaker. A 2022 study found that Black women in the UK are almost four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women.

As reported by the Canary’s Vannessa Viljoen, black women are also denied pain relief at the much higher rate during childbirth:

The Black Maternity Experiences survey, conducted by campaign group Five X More and published in July 2025, reported that almost a quarter of Black women were denied pain relief during labour. Nearly half received no explanation. This was not anecdote but evidence — data from more than a thousand women across the country.

Over 1,100 black and mixed heritage woman who’d given birth between 2021 and 2025 were surveyed on their experiences. The results confirm that this is a deliberate pattern of neglect. The survey found:

23% of women were denied pain relief they requested during labour.
40% of those denied were not given an explanation.
More than half reported difficulties when dealing with healthcare professionals.

Viljoen wrote:

The refusal of pain relief, and the dismissal of requests for it, reflect a historic stereotype. The stereotype suggests Black women are naturally stronger, more resilient, and therefore less deserving of medical intervention.

Research leaves women of colour out

There is also a huge problem with the fact that research around pregnancy is most often than not carried out on white women. As Sarah Esegbona-Adeigbe wrote

Racial disparities can be addressed more effectively by researching those groups that have poorer health outcomes.

Esegbona-Adeigbe highlights that one reason women of colour are less keen to take part in medical research is the historical exploitation of women of colour by doctors. Many advancements in the field of gynaecology can be traced back to doctors forcibly experimenting on Black enslaved women without pain relief or anaesthesia.

However, as Esegbona-Adeigbe also points out, we can’t just blame the past. She cites the lack of culturally sensitive research methods, but also what she calls “lack of effective strategies to promote inclusion”. Basically, they don’t fucking bother to include women of colour.

It’s clear that women of colour are already at increased risk during pregnancy compared to white women. The existing healthcare system is already obviously biased towards women of colour, so how could we possibly trust that pregnant people of colour will be safeguarded from Assisted Dying?

Let’s be honest though – the whole system is already broken beyond repair. The NHS has been hacked up and sold to the richest donors. The DWP demonises disabled people then cuts off their benefits and leaves them to die. Ultimately, the issue with assisted dying has always been this: how can we trust the state to legally kill people en masse, when it’s already happily killing god knows how many legally through a deeply broken system?

Featured image via the Canary

By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

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Assisted dying in pregnancy would be even more dangerous for women of colour