The heartbreaking and shocking reality of inequalities surrounding childbirth in the US healthcare system for Black women are brought vividly home by the opening minutes of Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee's Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning documentary. Home videos show Shamony Gibson and Amber Rose Isaac as the vibrant, expectant young women they were before they lost their lives shortly after giving birth.

Every loss of life is a tragedy, but that both these women's deaths could easily have been avoided, is damning as is the bald fact that, in America, Black women are four times more likely to die in or as a result of childbirth than their white counterparts.  .

Shamony died from a pulmonary embolism a fortnight after giving birth, with days of concern about her symptoms raised with and dismissed by doctors. Amber Rose's medics, meanwhile, failed to notice her blood platelet count was dangerously low,...