FOR BLACK AND NATIVE WOMEN, DOULAS CAN PREVENT DEATHS - Cross Post

I was honored to speak on the importance of doulas for marginalized communities, specifically in Black communities. The latest reported evidence is clear - While the United States as a whole still has the worst maternal and fetal outcomes in any developed nation, Black women continue to die at a rate that is twice that of white women.

This is based in historical, institutional, and structural racism and bias. Black, Brown and Native doulas are working hard, but we need our white doulas and birth workers to be working even harder to address and confront the biases and discrimination they see to create change.

Here’s a snippet of the part I contributed to this piece. Read the entire piece here. And please share widely.

It’s the desire to help families that spurs many Black and Native doulas to do this work. Erika Davis, a childbirth educator, birth and postpartum doula tells Wear Your Voice Magazine, “I cannot count the times I’ve received a doula inquiry that starts ‘As a Black woman it’s important to me to have a Black doula’ or ‘As a POC I want to make sure my doula is a POC’ or ‘As a queer person having a queer doula is vital.'”

“Marginalized people, specifically Black people who give birth, benefit greatly by having a person who looks like them in a supporting role during the labor, birth and postpartum process,” Davis continues. “Especially in hospital birth where the birthing person may be surrounded by nurses and doctors who are white or may not have their best interests in mind because of internalized and institutional racism and bias.”