Black Mothering Imperiled

Photo by: Andrae B. Ricketts on Unsplash

[Image description: A black and white photography of a Black woman wearing a head scarf while holding a baby in a blanket against a black background.]

*Trigger warnings: systemic misogynoir, family separation, anti-Black violence, medical trauma, abortion, and related topics

This Mother’s Day will be the first for the Jackson family with their infant daughter Mila. Mila, born on March 21st. in Texas under the care of a midwife, made headlines when she was taken from her family. When Mila’s parents, both Black, chose to follow their midwife’s advice for treating her jaundice over their pediatrician’s directive to go to the ER, the Department of Family and Protective Services was called and Mila was taken from their care on March 28th. The family’s ordeal lasted 23 days as Mila was kept in foster care, her parents at points unaware of where she was. It was only after the collective effort of activists and organizations like The Afiya Center that Mila was finally brought home.

As people rejoiced at the victory, The Afiya Center’s D’Andra Willis gave a chilling warning that there will inevitably be more traumatic stories like Mila’s without a long overdue reckoning about the oppressive inequity of the child welfare and criminal justice systems. Willis also highlighted an often overlooked point in today’s white dominated public discourse about reproductive rights, stating, “We need people to understand reproductive justice and freedom also means families have a right to choose when and how they want to parent [...]This includes informed decision making, culturally sensitive care and choosing birth and postpartum support plans that meet their specific needs.” 

With the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, there has been a steadily increasing drumbeat coming from new corners about how much worse Black women will be impacted by anti-abortion legislation. Now, don’t get me wrong, this concern is supported by plenty of data. Yet, the motivation behind why we’re hearing more and more about Black birthing mortality is suspect. Why now? What about the overturning of Roe v. Wade prompted certain people to suddenly find their voices about this long standing issue? 

The predictable answer is white feminism. It is the age-old move of using Black women to bolster the initiatives white women are fighting first and foremost for themselves. As the sky came falling down on their heads with the overturning of Roe, women screamed and grieved. And in that panic, non-Black women reached in desperation for the last jarring argument they could make: without access to abortion, Black maternal mortality would skyrocket.

Now, the gruesome reality that overturning Roe could lead to the deaths of women like themselves had not just dawned on white activists. Simultaneously, people in Black communities affected by both a lack of safe abortion access and high childbirth death rates also foresaw that their double-jeopardy would worsen perilously. It is not new news to us that Black birthing people have a three times higher likelihood and their Black infants a four times higher likelihood of dying in childbirth than white parents and babies. Back in 2020, while we were finishing up at Columbia University, a doula friend of mine shared that Black women like ourselves who were soon to possess higher education degrees could be as much as four to five times more likely to die in childbirth. So, to many of us, the CDC’s findings about Black maternal mortality rates, or their three primary causes—preconditions (including depression for all my melanated, mentally ill friends), structural racism, and unconscious bias—are unsurprising.

But, the audacity to choose this moment of outright white supremacist patriarchal assault to raise the alarm of Black death, like that’s going to reverse the bottoming out of our democracy, is a choice. It’s a choice non-Black women keep making, and it’s not for the sake of us Black folk. Their choice is a reminder that, to non-Black women, Black women are just a tool in the tool box: when all else fails, reach for Black women to save the day. And you don’t even need our agentic voices to do so, just our trauma to wield as data to levy your interests.

Now, you may think my criticism unfair. Isn’t it better for more people to be speaking out about Black people’s reproductive issues? Sure. But, I refuse to be gaslit that this new cacophony—if we can even really call it that—is rooted in an influx of genuine caring. Let’s be serious: non-Black women—who are rightfully afraid of losing their bodily autonomy—care as much about Black childbearing mortality as they do about indigenous people’s access to safe abortions. 

The poorly thought out idea to place abortion clinics on reservations to try and skirt the feds did not come from Native people. It was concocted with no consideration of Native American sovereignty, Indian council functions, nor the potential escalation of the MMIW2S crisis. In a similar vein of thoughtlessness, too often non-Black feminists use the framing that Black people need abortion access because we’re more likely to die in childbirth. If that is your argument, then you never really cared about securing our right to survive carrying a pregnancy to term if we wanted to. You are not fighting to defend our choices; you are fighting to shore up the choice you recognize as imperiled because it’s the one you fear you’ve lost, too.

The fact is, even with maternal mortality worsening across the board, U.S. rates embarrassingly high compared to comparably wealthy countries, and the availability of data indicating preventability in over 80% of pregnancy-related deaths, white activists rarely talk about this crisis. It is why my ears perked up when Elizabeth Warren joined Kamala Harris in raising the issue of maternal mortality to greater attention in liberal politics in the lead-up to the 2020 election. Additionally, high profile testimonials like that of Serena Williams about Black women’s life-threatening post-birth mistreatment in hospitals have also increased awareness. 

Yet, even with this ringing of alarms in liberal politics, rhetoric about reproductive justice in the public square has remained skewed mostly toward abortion. And the focus remains imbalanced even though NIH studies have found that abortion is less risky than pregnancy in this country, such that complete abortion bans that leave Black people in some states with no other option than forced birth could raise Black birthing mortality by as much as 33%. 

Despite this interconnection of crises, we still use separate designations of “reproductive justice” and “birthing justice”: the former referencing a multiracial (yet white-dominated) movement to secure abortion access and the latter a Black women’s issue movement. With so much false separation, the valiant work of SisterSong’s Monica Simpson shows that the two causes, especially for BIPOC and poor birthing people, are intricately intertwined. Poor BIPOC people in the South especially are on the frontlines of fighting to secure all choices, because when it comes to Black parenting, all choices are life and death and all choices are imperiled.

“We need non-Black activists to raise their voices about these issues holistically, because for many, the overturning of Roe didn’t mark the first loss of choice, it marked yet another blow to having any safe choices. ”

Hopefully, with the growing attention to the Black maternal mortality crisis and the besieged state of Black parenting with testimonies like those of Mila Jackson’s parents, more non-Black reproductive justice activists will keep in mind that the choice to abort is not the only imperiled choice for Blackparents in the U.S. We need non-Black activists to raise their voices about these issues holistically, because for many, the overturning of Roe didn’t mark the first loss of choice, it marked yet another blow to having any safe choices. Consequently, we need an expanded understanding of what multifaceted reproductive justice entails. 

It must be a fight for Black pregnant people and their chosen obstetricians, abortionists, doulas, and midwives. It must be a fight for infrastructure for terminating Black pregnancies safely and bearing and raising Black children safely. It must be a fight for Black lives.