In this episode we address the topic of Black women’s birth equity, birth justice and maternal health. This topic is extremely timely with the recently leaked 1st draft of the Supreme court’s ruling which purports to overturn the 40 plus year precedent in Roe Vs. Wade which makes abortion in the US legal. Even with Roe still law of the land Black women are more likely than women of all other races to experience reproductive inequities. They are more likely to seek abortion services, they are more likely to die during and as a consequence of child birth, they are more likely to have their children taken away by the state and much much more. Today we will be discussing the long standing historical reasons for these inequities, what birthing equity practitioners are doing in our communities to address these inequities and talk about what the future holds for Black women in a projected post-Roe United states.
For this conversation, host Andrea Baldwin is joined by Dr. Natalie Cook and Zuleka Woods. Dr. Cook is an Assistant Professor of Public Health at Virginia Tech, she is a critical educator, transformative evaluator and researcher, as well as a culturally-affirming full-spectrum doula. Dr Cook co-facilitated a week-long module in Making All Black Lives Matter (MABLM) course that I co-taught with Dr. Shannon Bell in the spring semester 2022. The MABLM course has been informing a special series of the standpoints podcast, for which this episode is one. This series is made possible in part by a collaborative grant funded by the University Libraries at Virginia Tech.
