Birth Care for Every Body

In this rebroadcast episode from 2021, Maria welcomes Marinah Valenzuela Farrell, a Chicanx midwife and director of the Changing Woman Initiative, and Dr. Rachel Hardeman, a reproductive health equity researcher and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, for a conversation about inequities in birthing healthcare. They discuss how to ground our ideas of parenthood in inclusive frameworks and the path towards reproductive justice.

ITT Staff Picks:

• Elizabeth Weller’s pregnancy turned into a medical nightmare under Texas’ anti-abortion law which went into effect in September 2021. Carrie Feibel talks with Elizabeth about how the law impacted her medical care in this piece for NPR. 

• “Each year, thousands of people experience unexpected pregnancy complications — cardiovascular issues, hypertension, diabetes — and about 700 die, making pregnancy and childbirth among the leading causes of death for all teenage girls and women 15 to 44 years old,” writes Akilah Johnson in this piece for the Washington Post.

• “If no abortions were to occur nation-wide maternal mortality rates would increase by 24 percent overall and a staggering 39 percent for Black women,” writes Jessica Washington in this piece for The Root.

Photo credit: AP Photo/Darren Hauck

This episode originally aired in May 2021.