April 17, 2025
Judge Hatchett lost her daughter Kira nine years ago after she delivered a second child through a scheduled cesarean section.
On a morning just days before Black Maternal Health Week, Judge Glenda Hatchett met with BLACK ENTERPRISE at a neighborhood staple: Gocha’s Breakfast Bar, a Black woman-owned breakfast and brunch cafe in the heart of Southwest Atlanta, not far from the Collier Heights community Hatchett was raised in. She is poised, spry, and owns a sense of urgency. She is every bit the fabulous and fierce judge you might be familiar with from Court TV.
Gavel aside, Hatchett pulls no punches when it comes to Black maternal health. Hatchett is not only on a mission to bring awareness to the epidemic that impacts Black women and birthing people at disparate rates, she is relentless in the pursuit to hold medical institutions and practitioners accountable for slights in obstetric care provided to the Black maternal demographic. Hatchett took up this initiative when her family was directly affected.
She lost her daughter Kira nine years ago after she delivered a second child through a scheduled cesarean section. The 39-year-old mother, who was healthy with no underlying illnesses or conditions that might complicate pregnancy, was “butchered” during the standard procedure—and became the victim of giving birth while Black.
“The autopsy showed that she was butchered,” Hatchett tells BE. “He butchered her and in the process just lacerated her insides, and if they had done the CT scan at 6 o’clock when it was ordered. She would be alive if they had kept monitoring her and seeing that she was bleeding.”
Hatchett continues, “All the medical experts who reviewed her medical records don’t understand how she lived as long as she lived…I think it was her sheer determination. They did not get her back into the OR until midnight, and at that time, they found liters of blood in her abdomen. She had bled out. She coded, and they brought her back. The second time, she was gone. This was totally preventable.”
Hatchett had not always been privy to the statistics around Black maternal mortality or the negligence women encounter during labor and delivery. On its face, cases like Kira’s might fall under medical malpractice, but there’s far more to consider: Kira was one of six women in lawsuits; the physician who performed the fatal C-section did not lose his license; Kira was a Black woman. These things mattered—and as a practicing attorney, Hatchett decided she needed to address Black maternal mortality with a more nuanced legal approach.
“I am taking on these cases now all over the country,” Hatchett tells BE. “We can never bring all of these mothers back. These children will never hug their mothers.”
“Three to four times more likely than Black and Brown women to die than white women,” she adds. “Well, none of them should be dying if it were preventable, right? Black women are catching the brunt of this. There is a disparity in the treatment of Black women in these hospitals. That is not only a malpractice practice issue—it is a civil rights issue, and that is exactly how we got to look at this.”
While there’s been an overall decline in maternal mortality rates across the U.S. to the tune of slightly over 10 percent according to statistics released by the CDC in 2023, pregnancy-related deaths are proportionately higher for Black women compared to white women and other ethnic groups of women. Findings from the National Vital Statistics System study revealed that for every 100,000 live births, Black women succumb to maternal death 50.3 times. The numbers are stark in comparison, dropping significantly for white women at 14.5, Latin women at 12.4, and Asian women at 11.
The Trump administration’s freeze on Title 10 funding in 20 states will further impact Black maternal health. Title 10 funds cover reproductive health care, including everything from sexually transmitted infections to abortion services. Hatchett says it will be “more difficult for women to make choices” about abortion, while others might be forced to give birth, albeit putting their own lives at risk.
“Right here in the state of Georgia, a young woman who died because she could not get the services because there was a question about whether it was medically needed or legal … and in the process of all of that past, she died,” Hatchett says.
Despite the improvement in the number of women dying in childbirth, Hatchett expects things will worsen, particularly when the loss of Medicaid enters the equation.
“If we’re talking about changes to Medicaid … that’s going to affect predominantly low-income communities and Black ones.”
Hatchett is no stranger to litigating on behalf of vulnerable communities. Unbeknownst to many, it was Hatchett who represented Philando Castile, who was killed by a Minnesota police officer in front of his girlfriend and daughter in July 2016 after a traffic stop. She currently represents clients involved in catastrophic accidents and events.
Judge Glenda Hatchett shows no signs of slowing down in the pursuit to protect the people. There’s more on the horizon.
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