‘I Found My Strength’
Zipporah Sumpter, one of Ms. March’s lawyers, said the law enforcement system treated her client as a criminal instead of a grieving mother. “This is not a criminal matter,” Ms. Sumpter said.
It was not just the fraught climate around pregnancy that caused Ms. March to suffer; “race definitely played a factor,” said Ms. Sumpter, who does not believe Ms. March received compassionate care when she went to the hospital the first or second time.
The management of Regional Medical Center, where Ms. March was treated, changed shortly after her hospitalization. The hospital is now managed by the Medical University of South Carolina, and its spokesperson declined to comment on Ms. March’s case.
Historically, birth outcomes for Black women in Orangeburg County, where Ms. March lost her pregnancy, have ranked among the worst in South Carolina. From 2020 to 2022, the average mortality rate for Black infants born in Orangeburg County was more than three times as high as the average rate for White infants statewide.
Today, Ms. March is still trying to process all that happened. She moved back in with her parents and is seeing a therapist. She is taking classes at a local community college and hopes to re-enroll at South Carolina State University to earn a 4-year degree. She still wants to become a doctor. She keeps her daughter’s ashes on a bookshelf in her bedroom.
“Through all of this, I found my strength. I found my voice. I want to help other young women that are in my position now and will be in the future,” she said. “I always had faith that God was going to be on my side, but I didn’t know how it was going to go with the justice system we have today.”
KFF Health News Florida correspondent Daniel Chang contributed to this article. KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.