Birthing Justice

Black women in the United States are three to five times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than their white peers, a statistic that has actually gotten worse over the last 30 years. Birthing Justice captures the experiences and challenges of Black women, their families, caretakers and advocates, and examines the structures and systems that determine these disparate mortality rates.

The film addresses the myriad issues fueling the maternal health crisis within the African American community while advocating for best practices that enhance birthing equity for all women, especially Black women. This national epidemic is addressed via four regions — Washington, D.C., Augusta, GA, Missouri, and California — by speaking with those who have been affected by current policies as well as those who are at the forefront of advancing policy change. Through the telling of personal experiences a picture emerges of a systemic lack in the maternal healthcare based on race. To contextualize those deficiencies, the film also explores American medical history, revealing how the impacts of eugenics and a sweeping medical report called The Flexner Report continue to impact medical training for Black doctors and outcomes for Black patients over a century after they were conceived.

Through these stories, what emerges again and again as one of the chief solutions to Black maternal health is a diversified medical labor force, with surveys revealing persistent implicit biases across the field. The film also looks other ways that positive maternal and pregnancy outcomes are achieved for Black mothers, including incorporating and training doulas and in-hospital nurse-midwives, and pending congressional legislation. Transforming this narrative of tragedy into one of hope, Birthing Justice flips the victim-blaming paradigm by centering on the lived experiences of Black women and their advocates as they fix a broken system and transform the future, one birth at a time.