The jaw-dropping statistics have made headlines for the past several years: Black women in different parts of America are two to four times more likely to die from pregnancy and childbirth complications than white women.

The hard questions are why this happens and how to change it.

A new documentary, "Birthing Justice," premiering this week on PBS, offers some answers, along with stories of joy, fear and hope. The film reveals the human lives and communities impacted by the crisis in Black maternal health.

Executive producer Denise Pines, the immediate past president of the Medical Board of California, said that when she first heard the grim statistics, she couldn't believe them. She did not personally know anyone who had lost a baby or had a close-call pregnancy or childbirth.

"How can this be happening?" she thought.

She and her business partners decided to explore the topic by filming what was happening on the ground in critical hot spots across the country. Missouri, which has one of the highest rates of Black maternal death in the country, became one of those locations.

In Missouri, Black women are four times more likely to die from pregnancy complications than white women. In St. Louis, Black babies are three times more likely to die before their first birthday than white babies.

Experts talked about why these disparities persist.

Kanika Harris, the director of maternal and child health for the Black Women's Health Imperative, said the biggest misconception is that something in the behavior of Black women -- their diet, exercise or habits -- makes pregnancy and childbirth more dangerous for them.

"There is nothing we are doing that is so different from anyone else in this country," she said. In fact, research that controls for income and education levels finds that Black women still die at higher rates from pregnancy complications than white women. The documentary cites multiple reasons: Black women are more likely to have undiagnosed conditions prior to pregnancy, are more likely to have their concerns and complaints ignored during childbirth, and are less likely to have access to postpartum care.

For all women, it's more dangerous to give birth today than it was 30 years ago: The overall maternal death rate in 1987 was 7.2 deaths per 100,000 live births; in 2021, it was 32.9. That's 10 times higher than many other high-income countries -- but still less than half of the rate for Black women in America, which reached 69.9 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2021.

The most tragic part is that most of these losses are preventable. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention compiled data from state committees that review these deaths and found that 84% of pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. were preventable.

"There's something deeply wrong when in 2022, we can't keep our moms alive," said Dr. Joia Crear-Perry, founder of the National Birth Equity Collaborative, in the documentary.

The role that bias and racism in the medical system play in the disproportionate number of Black maternal deaths is underscored throughout the film. Olympic track-and-field star Allyson Felix appears in the film to share her pregnancy story. She was unexpectedly diagnosed at 32 weeks pregnant with severe preeclampsia -- a life-threatening complication -- which resulted in an emergency C-section.

In a 2018 magazine interview, tennis champion Serena Williams revealed that she also experienced severe health complications after giving birth because doctors neglected to listen to her about her existing medical conditions.

"Birthing Justice" director and co-writer Monique N. Matthews says she didn't want to make a film that just highlighted the scary headlines. As a Black woman, she said focusing on the terrible statistics makes her think, "So, I have to be scared to bring life into this world, too?"

She wanted to tell a story about Black maternal health anchored in resistance and fueled by joy.

"Black joy is a weapon and a tool," she said.

The documentary contains interviews with people on the front lines working on solutions. That includes Jamaa Birth Village in Ferguson, Missouri, and its founder, Okunsola M. Amadou, who has helped train more than 200 Black doulas in St. Louis.

The documentary's website, birthingjustice.com, offers resources for those who are pregnant, along with a section on policy and legislative initiatives that viewers can advocate for to address these problems.

The film tells a compelling story of an unacceptable problem facing pregnant women in America.

More importantly, it shares ways we can change the system to save mothers' lives.

This year's women's NCAA basketball championship, the most-watched in history, has provoked a heated debate about how race influences our perception of good sportsmanship and competitive rivalries.

Louisiana State star forward Angel Reese, who won the women's March Madness Most Outstanding Player award, waved her open hand in front of her face at the Iowa Hawkeyes' Caitlin Clark near the end of the Tigers' victory on April 2.

The gesture, meaning "you can't see me," had also been used by Clark toward a Louisville player in the Elite Eight. Bleacher Report said that in that same game, Clark said to an opponent: "You're down by 15 points. Shut up."

ESPN produced a segment hailing Clark, who is white, as the "Queen of Clapbacks," which highlighted moments when she taunted other players. But when Reese, who is Black, used the gesture, the reaction was very different.

Dave Portnoy, founder of the site Barstool Sports, tweeted that Reese was a "classless piece of (expletive)." Commentator Keith Olbermann called her a "(expletive) idiot," also on Twitter.

Part of what makes Twitter so revealing is that we get to see people's immediate first takes. We tweet before we've had a chance to pause and think about what might be fueling our reactions and whether there are any inconsistencies in our perception. Those initial moments after an event are when our subconscious plays a greater role in our response.

Olbermann later clarified his remark: "I apologize for being uninformed last night about the back story on this. I don't follow hoops, college or pro, men or women. I had no idea about Clark. Both were wrong."

Olbermann's admission in this situation is a rarity. Most people double down when they are challenged, especially when it comes to matters of racial bias.

The ones who doubled down on their criticism of Reese said the circumstances of the championship game were different. Mark Harris with OutKick argued that Clark "threw up her hand for half a second while walking to the bench," while "Reese did the motion multiple times two feet from Clark's face."

That kind of parsing, which ignores the more aggressive moments of Clark's previous behavior, comes across as a missed opportunity to reflect on how we instinctively judge human behavior.

Do we respond the same way to trash talk among professional male athletes as we do among women? Does a temper tantrum by John McEnroe or Jimmy Connors provoke the same feelings and coverage as Serena Williams' outbursts?

Reese called out a double standard in how she is perceived versus other players. In the press conference after the victory, she said: "All year, I was critiqued for who I was. I don't fit the narrative. I don't fit the box that y'all want me to be in. I'm too hood. I'm too ghetto. Y'all told me that all year. But when other people do it, and y'all don't say nothing."

It's undeniable that intense rivalries, leading to taunting and trash talk, have long been part of the spectacle of sports. We can debate the role and appropriateness of such behavior -- from youth players to elite professionals -- and disagree about when it crosses the line.

Like many parents of student athletes, I want my own child to show respect to his competitors and win with grace. It goes back to the fundamental Golden Rule of treating others how you want to be treated.

But before I pile criticism on a 20-year-old college student, I'm going to check myself to see if I react consistently when another player behaves the same way. Am I more forgiving if a player on the team I support is taunting or trashing our sports rivals? Am I more understanding if a player looks like me? Am I more outraged when it's a young Black woman taunting an outstanding white player who has been crowned "The Queen of Clapbacks"?

If so, that might say more about me than her.

I never paid attention to school board elections before I had children in school.

My apathy had plenty of company.

In St. Louis County, off-cycle municipal elections might draw anywhere from 10% to 20% of eligible voters. The National School Boards Association cites even bleaker turnout rates: as low as 5% to 10% in several areas.

This means that a tiny sliver of Americans elect the people responsible for educating the majority of our citizens.

Before I had kids in public schools, I assumed these elections didn't really affect my life.

Oh, what a sweet summer child I was.

I had covered dozens of school board meetings as a young reporter 20 years ago, and they could never be described as riveting entertainment. In recent years, however, local school boards have become battlegrounds for partisans more interested in fighting culture wars than balancing school budgets.

The Washington Post recently reported that the violent rhetoric of once-fringe movements has now seeped into the Republican mainstream. The article cited a 2022 Anti-Defamation League report, which documented more than 100 candidates in local and state races who expressed extremist views -- including at least a dozen with documented connections to far-right militant groups.

These are the people who decide what books children in your community can read, what they will learn about our country's past (and present), and how they should treat others. They see school board races as the easiest infiltration point, and for good reason.

In a review of school board election statistics from 2014 to 2016 in the country's 1,000 largest school districts, Ballotpedia found that between 32% and 36% of school board candidates ran unopposed each year. And between 81% and 83% of incumbents who sought reelection won.

A former candidate in our district referred to herself as a "Confederate" on a social media profile. But even when a candidate isn't sharing racist memes on Facebook or Twitter, troubling digital footprints can come to light.

For example, Ryan Kerr, 39, of Ballwin, Missouri, is one of seven people running for three spots on the board for the Parkway district, which serves almost 17,000 students in the St. Louis suburbs. In 2016, Kerr recorded a four-minute profane, unhinged monologue in which he calls an unnamed Asian woman "panda," uses derogatory slurs, references lewd acts and swears dozens of times. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote about the video, which surfaced during the campaign, and about Kerr's apology once it became public.

In his apology, Kerr said he was drunk during the incident, and that afterward, he enrolled in "voluntary cultural diversity, equity and inclusion programs" where he "fell in love with Asian history and culture."

"This was a very isolated and targeted event, intoxicated, and immediately following (a) false allegation of assaulting a female," Kerr said in a written statement. "It wasn't right regardless and there weren't any excuses. I apologized very publicly, privately, and sought a counselor."

I'm glad Kerr recognized that his behavior -- as a 30-something adult at the time -- was unacceptable, and apologized for it. But his past adult behavior does make me question if he has the temperament and judgment needed by an elected official responsible for making decisions affecting thousands of children. It's also concerning that a person who admits to benefiting greatly from a diversity, equity and inclusion program states on his public candidate profile that one of the reasons he's running for the board is because of his belief in "diversity based on opinion and life experience over skin color."

It seems students don't deserve a chance to "fall in love" with other cultures the same way Kerr says he did.

The reality is that the impact and influence of school board elections goes far beyond just the children in that district. If the schools for the majority of children in this country are controlled by extremists or unhinged board members, it affects all of us.

Within a month, I'll again be part of the demographic that doesn't have children in local public schools. Both of our kids, who received 12 years of outstanding public school education, will be in college in the fall.

But I don't plan to miss a school board election ever again.