reproductive justice
mandatory reading
BOOKS
Racial Discrimination and Adverse Birth Outcomes: An Integrative Review from the Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health
NATAL — a podcast docuseries about having a baby while Black in the United States. Throughout the season, we pass the mic to Black parents to tell their stories about pregnancy, birthing, and postpartum care, in their own words. The docuseries also highlights the birthworkers, medical professionals, researchers, and advocates fighting daily for better care for Black birthing parents.
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts — A black feminist anthem and a rallying cry to civil rights activists who have gone soft, Dorothy Roberts' Killing the Black Body exposes how recent legislation has restricted the reproductive rights of black people, particularly those who live in poverty. No discussion of reproductive or racial justice is complete without this book.
Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice by Loretta Ross — presents a textured understanding of the reproductive rights movement by placing the experiences, priorities, and activism of women of color in the foreground. Using historical research, original organizational case studies, and personal interviews, the authors illuminate how women of color have led the fight to control their own bodies and reproductive destinies.
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A Washington — the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge, a practice that continues today.
Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy & Race Before Roe v. Wade by Rickie Solinger —Focusing on the two decades that followed World War II, Rickie Solinger's Wake Up Little Susie dissects the double standard that emerged toward unwed pregnancy in the postwar period. White parents gave up children for adoption, which was not available to black parents, and this disparity was used — and continues to be used today — to argue against black families' worth and self-direction in the U.S.
Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization by Khiara Bridges — this ethnography of pregnancy and birth at a large New York City public hospital explores the role of race in the medical setting and investigates how race carries powerful and disproportionately tragic material consequences for black mothers.
Climate Change Tied to Pregnancy Risks, Affecting Black Mothers Most by Christopher Flavelle — New York Times article breaks down the data from studies covering more than 32 million births from 2007 to 2019 demonstrating that exposed to high temperatures or air pollution are more likely to have premature, underweight or stillborn babies — and how Black mothers and babies are harmed at much higher rates than the population at large.
ARTICLES
Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis by Linda Villarosa — An analysis on how the answer to the disparity in death rates has everything to do with the lived experience of being a black woman in America.
A Frustrating Year of Reporting on Black Maternal Health by Danielle Jackson — Stories of women of color dying of childbirth have dominated headlines, but little has been done to change postpartum care.
The unbearable grief of Black mothers by A. Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez — On the embodied impact of racial and police violence on Black mothers, especially during COVID-19.
To Prevent Women from Dying in Childbirth, First Stop Blaming Them by Monica R. McLemore — Nearly 70% of all U.S. maternal deaths are considered preventable. This article breaks down how racism is the root cause of the Black maternal health crisis in the US.
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
BOOKS
PDF: Setting the Standard for Holistic Care of and for Black Women by the Black Mamas Matter Alliance
PDF: National Partnership for Women and Families: A report by National Partnership for Women and Families on the inequities in Black maternal health and the policy approaches to addressing them.
Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology by Dierdre Cooper Owens examines a wide range of scientific literature and less formal communications in which gynecologists propagated medical fictions about their patients, such as their belief that black enslaved women could withstand pain better than white women. Even as they were advancing medicine, these doctors legitimized groundless theories related to whiteness and blackness, men and women, and the inferiority of other races or nationalities.
Battling Over Birth: Black Women and the Maternal Health Care Crisis by Helen Arega, Linda Jones, and Dantia Hudson — centers the birth stories of Black women with recommendations and suggested best practices based on Black women’s documented experiences
Delivered by Midwives: African American Midwifery in the Twentieth-Century South by Jenny Luke — Winner of the 2019 American Association for the History of Nursing Lavinia L. Dock Award for Exemplary Historical Research and Writing in a Book
We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood by Dani McClain — first-time mother Dani McClain sets out to understand how to raise her daughter in what she, as a black woman, knows to be an unjust and hostile society. Black women are more likely to die during pregnancy or birth than any other race; black mothers must stand before television cameras telling the world that their slain children were human beings. What, then, is the best way to keep fear at bay and raise a child so she lives with dignity and joy?
Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy, and Childbirth by Julia Oparah and Alicia Bonaparte — A collection of essays and stories from maternal health experts, activists, and mothers with different perspectives relating to fixing a broken maternity care system for Black women.
Birth Work as Care Work – a vibrant collection of stories and insights from the front lines of birth activist communities. The personal has once more becomes political, and birth workers, supporters, and doulas now find themselves at the fore of collective struggles for freedom and dignity.
Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundation, Theory, Practice, Critique edited by Whitney Peoples, Lynn Roberts, Loretta Ross, and Erika Derkas — This anthology assembles two decades of work initiated by SisterSong Women of Color Health Collective, creators of the human rights–based “reproductive justice” framework to move beyond polarized pro-choice/pro-life debates. Rooted in Black feminism and built on intersecting identities, this revolutionary framework asserts a woman’s right to have children, to not have children, and to parent and provide for the children they have.
Reproductive Justice, Volume 1: An Introduction by Rickie Solinger and Loretta Ross
The Big Letdown: How Medicine, Big Business, and Feminism Undermine Breastfeeding by Kimberly Seals Allers
Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Black and Blue: The Origins and Consequences of Medical Racism by John Hoberman
Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement by Jennifer Nelson
Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South by Talitha L. LeFlouria
Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth by Dana-Ain Davis
Policing the National Body: Race, Gender and Criminalization in the United States by Jael Silliman and Anannya Bhattacharjee
Listen to Me Good: The Story of an Alabama Midwife, by Margaret Charles Smith
Motherwit: An Alabama Midwife's Story by Onnie Lee Logan
Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice by Zakiya Luna
ARTICLES
Race Isn’t a Risk Factor in Maternal Health. Racism Is. by Dr. Joia Crear-Perry
TED Talk: How Does Racism Affect Pregnant Women And Babies? by activist + doula Miriam Zoila Pérez advocates for methods that can help diminish disparities in maternal health
What the Abortion Bans Have to do With Poverty and Race by Renee Bracey Sherman
Addressing Disparities in Reproductive and Sexual Health Care in the U.S. from the Center for Reproductive Rights
Applying a critical race lens to relationship‐centered care in pregnancy and childbirth from the Journal for Birth Issues in Perinatal Care
Eliminating Racial Disparities in Maternal and Infant Mortality: A Comprehensive Policy Blueprint from the Center for American Progress
Racial Disparities in Birth Outcomes from the Midwives Alliance of North America
