Miriam Zoila Pérez

Miriam Zoila Pérez is a queer Cuban-American writer covering issues of race, health and gender. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Colorlines, Fusion, Alternet, The American Prospect, MORE Magazine, Talking Points Memo and a number of anthologies, including the recent New York Times Bestseller edited by Roxane Gay, “Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture.” Her 2016 TED Talk, “How Racism is Harming Pregnant Women–and What Can Help,” has been viewed over 850,000 times. She was an editor at Feministing.com for four years, during which the site was awarded the Sidney J Hillman Prize for Blog Journalism. Pérez is the author of “The Radical Doula Guide: A Political Primer for Full-Spectrum Pregnancy and Childbirth Support.”

Maternity Care in a “Majority Minority” Country

Miriam Zoila Pérez

Race-based maternal health disparities are no longer a concern of the minority — they are a concern of the majority. And they should be a top priority. If Medicaid doesn’t make room for alternative, potentially life saving maternal health models, we risk endangering the health of generations to come.

Surrogacy: The Next Frontier for Reproductive Justice

Miriam Zoila Pérez

Surrogacy is a complicated subject, to say the least. It involves many of the issues central to reproductive justice—bodily autonomy, a woman’s right to abortion, definitions of parenthood, and custody of children. It’s also an option increasingly relied upon by gay couples—usually gay men—to create families. It invariably brings up concerns about racial and economic justice when the majority of surrogates are low-income and many are women of color. It’s an issue on which few reproductive rights and justice groups are working on but one that deserves our close attention.

The Cost of Being Born At Home

Miriam Zoila Pérez

Upwardly-mobile moms may finally be catching on to the benefits of midwifery and homebirth, but low-income women are still firmly planted in the hospital, most often with medicalized births overseen by doctors.

The Myth of the Elective C-Section

Miriam Zoila Pérez

When the media covers the rising rate of c-section, it’s often ready to lay the blame at the feet of a woman we’re come to know well over the last few years -- the busy career mom scheduling her delivery between important business deals. But while some moms may be requesting surgical birth, research shows that has little to do with the overall increase in c-section rates nationwide.