Kira Johnson Dies After Cesarian Section as Hospital Ignores Her Husband's Pleas

Kira Johnson, 39, a multilingual college-educated woman, died on April 12, 2016, hours after delivering her second son by C-section at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Her husband, Charles Johnson IV, spent nine hours pleading for doctors to address obvious signs of internal bleeding. A nurse told him Kira was 'not a priority.' She was taken to surgery 10 hours after giving birth, when it was too late; she had more than five liters of blood in her abdomen. Charles Johnson subsequently founded 4Kira4Moms, lobbying for maternal health legislation. The case became a nationally known example of how dismissal of Black women's pain caused preventable deaths.