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.
When I was growing up in California, I often felt disconnected from my extended family in Mexico. Once I became a teenager, however, I realized our experiences weren't as different as I'd assumed in my youth, especially when it came to accessing sexual and reproductive health care.
Texas' new state-only funded Women's Health Program, built expressly to exclude Planned Parenthood from participation, has launched a website that's meant to help low-income women find health care providers. But does it work? And is the capacity there to fill the need? Our analysis indicates the answer is no.
Weekly global roundup: United Nations report on global maternal health yields mixed results; South Asian teen girls still marrying at high rates; Zambia sees conflict over various articles on reproductive rights in new constitution draft; Indonesia continues to struggle with reproductive and sexual health as they face growing rates of HIV infection.
What if all the grassroots groups who work with the families who are consistently pushed to the margins and thrown under the bus talked about their causes as if they were all connected? What if we worked as if we were facing the same stigma and hate? What if I, in my parenting, felt connected to immigrant mamas fighting to reclaim their community? What if I, in my resistance, understood deeply my relationship to mothers who lose their children to juvenile justice, foster care systems, and/or incarceration?
There is a disturbing trend on the rise in the U.S., one that crosses into many arenas — from legislation to insurance policy to our judicial system to the way individuals interact with their medical providers. The trend? Making women responsible for healthy birth outcomes and jailing them when they don't meet this unattainable standard.
If you happen to be a woman of color, you simply don’t have any business that is your own, as far as society is concerned. The Jezebel and Welfare Queen stereotypes shape the responses you receive from others when you have a belly full of baby. So, the next time someone asks me how many more babies I’m going to have, I will have to respond with a “Girllllll, stay out my bedroom.”
