Written by: Catie Buttner
250 Million Women
In 2014, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) estimated that globally, 250 million women live with insufficient reproductive health care. Specifically, birthing persons in the United States are more likely to die from pregnancy complications than 54 other industrialized countries.
The CDC has shown that “a [B]lack woman is 22 percent more likely to die from heart disease than a White woman, 71 percent more likely to perish from cervical cancer, but 243 percent more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth related causes.”
Communities of color and Black women, specifically, face greater rates of adverse health outcomes, reproductive health concerns, and maternal mortality, due to inter-generational racism and discrimination. For Black women, a lifetime of reproductive disadvantage leads to challenges, such as increased risks associated with delivery, low birth weight, and high rates of maternal death.
It’s better to be White and Poor than Black and Wealthy
Shared in this GFG blog post, researchers combined data from the IRS and California birth, death, and hospitalization records to track the impact of income on birth outcomes and maternal mortality. Findings demonstrated that “indeed, infant and maternal health in Black families at the top of the income distribution is markedly worse than that of white families at the bottom of the income distribution” (pg 2).
What is Birth Justice?
As a component of reproductive justice, birth justice centers the belief that all persons can birth and be parents if desired. As a movement, birth justice seeks to shed light, and, ultimately, end the impacts of institutional or structural racism, implicit bias, and other causes of the imbalances noted above. As the Black Women Birthing Justice collective shares, birth justice is the ability of all birthing persons to be able to make empowered decisions during pregnancy, labor, childbirth and postpartum.
The need for better reproductive health care is a concern of scholars and health professionals alike. Major global organizations spend large portions of their annual budgets on efforts toward better, more suitable, reproductive care for women across the globe. Yet, as a country that is considered highly developed, the United States continues to see staggering gaps in health outcomes.
Birth justice is critical to ensuring that these unacceptable gaps are reduced, if not eventually closed for good. Sustainability comes by challenging the norms of medical over-intervention, the universal access to gender-affirming reproductive care, the wide-spread availability of trauma-informed and culturally competent full spectrum Doulas,
Turning Ideas into Action
Without effort, advocacy, and funds, the movement of birth justice is just an idea. Our Birth Justice Fund works to offer intentional and essential support to Our model of intermediary support prioritizes funding, capacity, advocacy, and global networking, ensures that the work of birth justice is addressed from the most critical of avenues and not simply through one pathway.
By donating, you are signaling to mothers, women, children, birthing persons, and policy-makers that maternal health is not just “having a moment” or “a niche-issue.” You’re affirming that it is not enough to survive; we all deserve to thrive. Together we can make a world wherein it is safe for birthing persons to choose to build a family, when and how they want, with support and with their needs realized through supportive and affirmative care.