Welcome back to the Lighthouse! Buckle up, because this is a long one (and might not all fit in your inbox, so make sure to click the link at the top if it doesn’t all show up!).
I’ll keep this top part brief-ish so we can dig right in, but I wanted to make mention of something quick. This newsletter has morphed and changed a lot over time, sometimes in small ways and sometimes in big. I don’t always a clear-cut vision of what to include and what to leave out, because sometimes it just depends on what I’ve all saved. I try to balance bringing up important current events without bombarding people with the same information they’ve already seen a hundred times before this newsletter comes out, and it can be challenging to make that decision. But one thing I’ve been thinking about is how much I’ll include that relates to national elections, as we’re coming up on the 2024 election cycle already.
At this point, my plan is “not much,” meaning I’ll try to only include things that are directly relevant to, say, reproductive justice, or if there’s something I read and think is important to share. But my promise (hope?) at this point is to limit how much I include, because I know you don’t need yet another source of anxiety and annoyance about national politics. After all, we get enough of that everywhere else already, and as Roxane Gay recently wrote, major news publications still haven’t learned a damn thing from the last election cycle.
Now, onto the newsletter!
Medical Racism’s Role in the Recent Spike in Maternal Mortality
Content Note: This article and other links throughout this section discuss medical racism, maternal mortality, family policing, and legal child abduction. Please use your discretion in deciding whether to read this section or the linked articles.
“Inequities in access to quality health care before, during, and after pregnancy, as well as provider bias during labor and delivery, contribute to the dismal outcomes. And, the ‘weathering’ effect that exposure to discrimination has on Black people’s bodies over a lifetime, which can break down a mother’s body prematurely, is also linked to the high death rates. That, combined with COVID’s disproportionate impact on Black Americans, drove the spike, experts say.”
Maternal1 mortality rates spiked between 2020 and 2021 across racial groups, reflecting a higher increase than usual across the board. But as the “than usual” implies, rates have been steadily increasing for years. For Black women, this has been on top of the fact that they already experience roughly 3x higher rates than white women. And while we know that COVID-19 played a role in this particular spike, especially given how communities of color have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, it doesn’t explain the larger trend of these rates. So what does?
It’s both a complex combination of things and also painfully simple: systemic racism. The medical system is, after all, a system, and racism is built into it like any other system we have today. Of course, it goes beyond the medical system, too, since racism permeates all aspects of life. So everything leading up to a Black person becoming pregnant and giving birth already impacts how that pregnancy and birth may go, like what kind of medical support they’ll be able to get (or won’t) and if they’ll have the adequate resources throughout (is their environment safe, with clean air and water? do they have access to affordable, nourishing foods? do they have a stable job that is paying them fairly and adequately to cover their needs?). Once they are pregnant, they are less likely to have their pain taken seriously by doctors and face the continued legacy of medical racism at every turn, up to and during birth.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. In their recent article, “Child Removal Fears and Black Mothers’ Medical Decision-Making,” co-authors DeAnna Y. Smith and Alexus Roane explore how “[f]ear of state punishment joins medical mistrust and experiences of discrimination” when Black mothers make decisions about medical care for themselves and their children. And it’s no wonder why, when Black families (along with Brown and Indigenous families) are investigated by CPS at much higher rates than white families, leading to increased surveillance that often results in family separation. If we look at the stories of Black families who have experienced this surveillance, we see that it can happen any time. It could be immediately after a baby is born (and after non-consensual drug testing is done). It could be following a traffic stop, where a mother is told her and her children are free to go, but then find out the hard way that that isn’t true. It could happen after parents choose to work with their midwife over their pediatrician. (Thankfully, the tireless work of the Afiya Center and Next Generation Action Network resulted in the family being reunited.) The stories go on and on.
So what can we do from here? How do we make pregnancy, birth, and postpartum safer for Black families? There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when dealing with deeply embedded racism, of course, but there are things we can all do as we fight for a better future. For Black people who are pregnant or plan to be pregnant in the future, Protecting Your Birth: A Guide For Black Mothers (unpaywalled version here) has some tips on what to prepare for, which references Loom’s Preferences That Protect that you can download from their site. The IRTH app may also help you find more useful doctor/hospital reviews, and there are some great tools online for finding Black doulas and midwives. And since this section has focused so much on negative outcomes, I want to highlight some sources for positive birth stories as well, since they’re just as important: the Birthright podcast shares “stories of joy and healing in Black birth,” and the NATAL series covers a variety of stories, including some interviews with birthworkers throughout.
For everyone else (and especially white people, since we are responsible for anti-Black racism and therefore its dismantling as well), there are many ways to help make change. If you’re a birthworker, Evidence Based Birth’s The Evidence on: Anti-Racism in Health Care and Birth Work is a fantastic deep-dive resource to start with and incorporate into your work. But also make sure to support Black birthworkers in your community (and beyond), because we all deserve to have birth support from people who understand our unique experiences available. The same goes for supporting birth centers, which often struggle to get and stay funded, and funding for QBIPOC midwifery students. And of course, make sure to keep this all in the context of structural racism as a whole, and remember how all of these pieces connect. For example, consider how reparations could also be way to address the harm caused by our health care system.
See also: upEND explains why we can’t have reproductive justice without ending family policing. When it comes to what not to do to help address racism, don’t use transracial adoption as an experiment.
What's Happening at Lakeshore Liberation?
Nothing new to share this time!
What’s Going on in Reproductive Justice
Advisers to the FDA have backed the first over-the-counter birth control pill.
Is Routine Induction at 41 Weeks Superior to Expectant Management? As usual, Henci Goer offers a breakdown of data and a non-biased view of what it means for pregnant people weighing their options.
If you’re a birthworker, check out ashley’s newest offering of Tension & Trauma Release for Birthworkers!
Democrats are apparently split on the issue of whether parents should have to be notified if their child has or is seeking an abortion, often called parental notification and consent laws. Some have noted that they think it would be a “political liability” to repeal these in various states, given the conservative “parents’ rights” push that has been used to ban queer books and curricula that mentions things like queer people and racism. To that I say, so what? Why are they always spending so much time considering what conservative voters — who aren’t voting for them anyway — might think? Anyway, kids deserve bodily autonomy like anyone else and aren’t the property of their parents. If they need an abortion, they should be able to get one. And if they don’t want to tell their parents about it, maybe their parents should ask themselves why their kids don’t trust them with that information, rather than assume they deserve access to every aspect of their kids’ lives by default.
What’s Going on in Wisconsin
For the third year, Madison is providing free summer bus passes to middle and high schoolers to encourage them to use public transit and have more independence. While I think it’d be great if all public transit were free to everyone to use, this seems like a cool way to help kids get around the city!
As our state government considers increasing local funding via shared revenue, Republicans are attaching strings to said money, such as forcing Milwaukee Public Schools to bring armed police officers back into their district, among other things. The Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression is petitioning to demand the money be made available without these strings, and you can support the petition by signing onto the demands here!
As the COVID-19 public health emergency (prematurely) ends, WPR looks at what that means for Wisconsin. Meanwhile, the CDC’s conference of epidemic intelligence service officers had — you guessed it — COVID infections.
Voucher schools, which use public funding via tuition vouchers, are rife with discrimination against queer & trans kids and disabled kids in Wisconsin (and really, all over).
What I've Been Reading
Ragen Chastain breaks down the research we have on the effects of weight stigma on fat people. A lot of it points to something many people already know but can’t seem to fathom would apply to the same fat people they bully and harass constantly, which is that on-going stress can lead to a multitude of health issues.
You may have heard about the Citi Bike incident, but whose side have you heard? (If you want to help support the teenager that has been slandered and put at risk in all of this, as well as his family, you can find their GoFundMe here!)
Cops have been exaggerating, to put it mildly, how dangerous encountering fentanyl is.
The GOP is now going after no-fault divorce, because of course they are!
Jordan Neely was murdered because he made a white man uncomfortable, and while that man is being charged with second-degree manslaughter, so many people are rushing to his defense and blaming Jordan for his own death.
From Strong Towns, There’s No Such Thing as Affordable Housing is a self-admitted clickbait title, but it’s a good starting point for understanding why “affordable housing” is so hard to find.
Jaelynn Chaney is petitioning the FAA to make airline travel safer for fat and disabled passengers. If you have a moment, read it and sign on — it’s close to hitting 10k signatures!
What I'm Watching
Janelle Monáe is back with a new song from their upcoming album, The Age of Pleasure, called Lipstick Lover. It’s been stuck in my head since it came out, and the music video is extremely hot and queer, which of course means some people are mad about it. But they’re wrong and boring, so I don’t care! Go listen to this song & watch the video!
What I'm Listening To
The TED Radio Hour always pulls together such interesting stories (and people telling them!), and the recent DIY episode was no exception. It’s definitely not the type of DIY I expected!
Bodies podcast host Allison Behringer has previously interviewed Angelina Fanous, a reporter who was diagnosed with ALS almost a decade ago, to talk about what life was like for her then. Now that Angelina is likely reaching the end of her life as the disease progresses, she comes back to the show to talk about preparing for death, writing her own obituary, and the story she’ll leave behind.
On Code Switch, Naomi Jackson talks about her experiences with bipolar disorder and, “how she has had to decipher which of her fears stem from her illness and which are backed by the history of racism.”
Places to Donate To
Support a Black fat liberationist in getting her first apartment!
A Sheboygan local is raising funds to help get their sweet cat Lunar surgery.
Donate to support the Tulsa Race Massacre survivors & descendants!
Questions? Comments? Suggestions?
Feel free to share them below or contact me directly.
I use the term “maternal” and other gendered language in this section, despite the fact that we know that not only women/mothers get pregnant and birth, because the research and evidence we have typically only includes cis women. While we could make some assumptions about what the postnatal statistics may look like for Black trans/non-binary/gender-non-conforming people who give birth, the current research referenced here has left them out, so I don’t want to mislead anyone about what specific data we do (and don’t) have yet when talking about specific numbers.