April Valentine arrived at Centinela Hospital in Inglewood, Calif., on January 9 to give birth. Valentine, 31, had selected Centinela because she would be under the care of a Black woman physician. In the weeks leading up to her delivery, she had written on an affirmation board messages like “I will not have any complications” and “I will have a healthy baby girl,” The LAist reported in February. But she died the day after giving birth, via an emergency C-section. She never got the chance to meet her daughter.

Centinela Hospital is now under investigation by the state’s health department for improperly caring for Valentine, whose family says that her concerns about leg pain were ignored and that she was denied access to her doula. Her boyfriend, Nigha Robertson, testified before the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors that after Valentine stopped breathing, “I’m the only one who touched her. I’m the one who did CPR. Nobody touched her, we screamed and begged for help…. They just let her lay there and die.”

Too many women in this country have died while pregnant or shortly after giving birth, and Black women like Valentine—who, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, face the highest rates of maternal death—are at particular risk. Now, new data from the CDC shows that in 2021, the number of maternal deaths across all racial groups increased by a shocking 40 percent. This follows the public health agency’s announcement that four out of five maternal deaths between 2017 and 2019 were preventable.