American Dreams: Reproductive Justice

Reproductive justice cures the injustices birthing people face. In this episode, we explore the historic and current challenges to reproductive health, safety and autonomy.

In this episode, we’re exploring medical systems in Black and Brown communities. The maternal mortality rate for Black women is THREE TIMES the rate than it is for white women. More surprisingly, the ALMOST mortality rate is higher than most of us realize.

Chi Chi Okwu, who you heard in episode 1, starts us off by pointing out that the likelihood that you will have a healthy pregnancy, which includes the postpartum experience, is embedded in the history of our country. And it can mostly really be described with one word: Racism.

"Like a lot of things in our country it was founded on racist ideology," said Okwu, executive director of EverThrive Illinois. "A lot of research was done on slaves, and in ways that were really harmful."

Historian Alicia Suarez of DePaw University in Indiana notes that Black women are - still - seen as being "obstetrically hardy" and that "they don't feel pain."

Tufts University researcher Ndidiamaka Amutah-Onukagha breaks it down even further, noting that almost every gynecological procedure we used today was "tested" on enslaved Black women, often without anesthesia.

We also talk to Wanda Irving, whose daughter, Shalon Irving died in January 2017, three weeks after she had given birth. Wanda was featured in an NPR segment by Renee Montagne and a ProPublica story by Nina Martin, and we talked to her for this podcast. Shalon Irving was a CDC researcher in pregnancy mortality. She had two PhDs and two master's degrees. "But yet and still," says her mother, "none of those degrees, experience, awards protected her.

"I used to think the system failed Shalon," said Wanda. "It didn’t fail her, it operated exactly how it was set up to operate. And she was just one more victim of a system that does not value women, and especially does not value Black women."

This is echoed by Martin, who found Shalon Irving's story when she was writing about maternal mortality for ProPublica.

Two things struck Martin. One, the number of deaths that occur after childbirth far outpaced the number of deaths during pregnancy. And, the fact that over 60,000 people "nearly die" after pregnancy. "That’s a lot of people," said Martin.

Martin agrees that it's about race - Okwu and Suarez talk in this episode about the idea of "weathering" in Black women - but she notes "this is about gender."

"It’s about women being treated as if they are less than - less than men, less than doctors and nurses, less than babies. For women of color - particularly Black and indigenous women - it’s so much worse... In that intersectional way, there are profound disparities around race and class. But it starts for me as a gender issue."

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American Dreams: Reproductive Justice is co-executive produced and hosted by Erika Washington, powered by Make It Work Nevada. The podcast is co-executive produced, written, and edited by Carrie Kaufman of Overthinking Media LLC. Music by Wil Black of Black Gypsy Music, with The Flobots. Artwork by Brent Holmes.

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The voices you heard on today’s program are Chi Chi Okwu from Everthrive Illinois, Las Vegas midwife Jollina Simpson, historian Alicia Suarez, Dr. Toni Bond - who was one of the founders of the Reproductive Justice movement, Tufts researcher Ndidiamaka Amutah-Onukagha journalist Nina Martin, and Wanda Irving, who lost her daughter, Shalon to a postpartum infection that was preventable.

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In our next episodes, we'll look at how hard it is for women who want children to have them.

Related Links:
Our infant mortality rate is a national embarrassment, Washington Post. Sept. 2014
Maternal Mortality Rates in the U.S. - CDC

We also want to pay homage to the 12 women who were in the room in 1994: