by Ambreia Meadows-Fernandez

Today is the annual celebration of my choice to give birth to my most precious gift. It’s been a year filled with mountainous highs and extreme lows. But for me, this first year has made something crystal clear—parenthood is a choice not to be taken lightly, and it comes with lots of risks. In the United States, pregnancy and childbirth are becoming increasingly dangerous for women of color

The United States is the only developed nation with a rising maternal mortality rate. There has been a 26.6% increase in maternal mortality between 2000 and 2014.

Certain groups of women are less likely to get early prenatal care: Poor, black, Hispanic, unmarried, lacking a high-school diploma and teens. A major factor is whether the pregnancy is unplanned.
As a result, we had to deliver at a hospital two hours away and things didn't get better fast. In addition to his kidney concerns, he couldn't keep any food down for the first three or four days of his life. He was small and losing weight fast. There were many times I couldn't hold him as close as I wanted because he was connected to so many wires. I would always say, "I just wish I had a wireless baby." But we kept fighting.

He didn't latch on for the first time until he was one month old. I was stressed and emotionally and physically weak. We found out soon after it was because I had left over placenta in my body for six weeks. It made me very sick, and had I not left for Texas to get quality health care, I could have died. My health improved post-D&C, but I was left with a portion of the medical bill.

If I were not married to a member of the armed forces, both my sons and my own medical bills would have broken us; possibly for life. Luckily, he is now believed to have two functioning kidneys but we have to drive two hours to the nearest quality hospital every three months to get ultrasounds done to check their status.

If I hadn't gone to La Leche meetings since I was 6 months pregnant, the desire to breastfeed could have easily broken me. Depression could have taken over my life and Salem could have lost a mom. Luckily, we had insurance to cover counseling for my post-birth trauma.
And if I didn't have resources to travel to Texas to have checked the symptoms the Cheyenne hospital said were nonthreatening, I likely would have died.

With the potential repeal of the ACA, there are many who will be in my shoes with health complications for both mom and baby. But they won’t be fortunate enough to get the services they deserve. The maternal mortality rate will continue to rise.
In the US, Black women have a maternal mortality rate of 41 per 100,000 and climbing as compared to a rate of 12 per 100,000 experienced by White women.

And our Infant mortality rate isn’t much better. As stated in a previous article,



I wanted my son, but imagine if I were less prepared. Imagine if I had an unexpected pregnancy with no insurance, sub-par healthcare and no support.

I made the CHOICE to have my son, but for a woman in a different position this may not have been feasible.

If you want abortions to end, fix the many factors that cause moms to seek them. Fight for quality sex-ed, healthcare access, and a supportive new mom network. Had I chosen to give birth a little earlier there could be two casualties—my son and myself.

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Impulsive yet shockingly well-prepared, Ambreia Meadows-Fernandez has a tendency to take leaps and land on her feet. She is passionate about breastfeeding, social justice, and her family. A military spouse and mother who's just waiting to see what is next in life. See more of Ambreia at her writer's page and website

by Erica Thurman

I was watching the Love and Hip Hop reunion last week, and something occurred to me. Somewhere between Olivia Pope and Amina Pankey by way of Mary Jane Paul and K Michelle, Black women are having and talking about abortions on TV.

by Marcela Howell

As the President concluded his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, the message was clear if unconventional. He set low expectations for success in working with a GOP-led Congress but also issued a call to the American people to take our future into our own hands, calling on us to fulfill our civic duty by voting, engaging in public service, and even protesting. Looking ahead to a year full of peril and opportunity for Black women's health, I can say that Black women are already heeding this call. We must, and will, define for ourselves what liberation looks like and demand accountability from the politicians who stand in our way.

For the past forty years, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently supported the constitutional right of women to have abortions. So, as I look ahead to March, when the Court will review the law (HB 2) that has shut down more than half of the clinics in Texas, the image that comes to my mind is one of dominoes standing back to back across a map of the United States. With this new case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole, will those dominoes start to fall?

According to recent analysis, in the last five years politicians who want abortion to be completely illegal have quietly passed 288 new laws that make it harder and harder for women to access abortion care (57 in 2015 alone). The reach of these laws has expanded across vast regions of the U.S., forcing doctors to lie to women, requiring women to make multiple appointments and delay care, and shutting down clinics. These requirements are neither medically necessary, nor beneficial to women’s health.

However, the Supreme Court that will be decided this year goes far beyond one state’s abortion laws. In deciding Whole Woman’s Health, the Supreme Court has the opportunity to uphold every woman’s right to end a pregnancy with dignity by deeming unconstitutional not just the Texas law, but similar laws in other states.

Politicians and pundits on both sides of the debate have remarked on how much is at stake in this case: in Texas, in abortion case law, for women writ large. But there’s been comparatively little in-depth discussion about what this case means for Black women across the country. What it means for our families, our communities, and our futures.

Restrictions on abortion should matter to each and every one of us, but the truth is they don’t harm us all equally. Even after the landmark Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which celebrates its 43rd anniversary on January 22nd, the ability to end a pregnancy has depended largely on what state a woman lives in, how much money she makes, whether she is over 18, how easy or difficult it is for her to find a provider and the additional barriers, cultural and personal, she faces in making and keeping an appointment.
For women enrolled in Medicaid, exercising the constitutional right granted in Roe has been difficult for nearly four decades, ever since the Hyde Amendment, denying abortion insurance coverage to low-income women, was first passed. While 15 states now provide coverage for abortion using state funds, low-income women, primarily women of color, immigrant women and young women in the remaining 35 states and Washington, D.C. are left struggling to make ends meet.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2000, 13 states were considered “hostile” to abortion rights. These included the usual suspects: “red” states like Texas, North Dakota, South Carolina, and Kentucky. Flash forward to 2014, and 27 states were considered hostile to abortion rights, with 18 now considered “extremely hostile.” No longer are these states scattered throughout the map. Now the hostile territory blankets the South, reaching in an unbroken swath from Virginia to Florida, across to Texas, and everywhere in between.

So where does the Supreme Court case figure in? It could play a key role in reducing the “hostile territory” for Black women seeking abortion. States with laws on the books that might be affected by a decision regarding the ambulatory surgical center (ASC) and admitting privileges requirements challenged in Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

These twenty states alone are home to 12.5 million Black women--a majority of Black women in the U.S. The Hyde Amendment restrictions already create “insurmountable barriers” for women struggling to make ends meet. And we know that denying a woman already struggling access to abortion can push her further into poverty.

When clinics in these same states are forced to close, Black women, already facing barriers to quality, affordable health care, may be left with nowhere to turn. Others will save and struggle to travel hundreds of miles to a clinic in another state, which could overwhelm the remaining clinics, and make it harder for women living there to get an appointment on time.

Of course, this is far from the first time we’ve faced hostile policies in the places we call home. Many of these same states have a history of denying healthcare, fair employment, educational opportunities, and voting rights to Black women, violations of our civil rights that continue to this day. Living in “hostile territory” is not new to Black women, but neither is it acceptable.

But here is what some of the politicians passing these laws forget: the South may be embattled by anti-choice politicians, but it is also the birthplace of Dorothy Height, Amelia Boynton Robinson, and Daisy Lee Gatson Bates. Those same hostile states are where we are organizing in churches, beauty salons, and around the kitchen table. And those same states are also home to Black women voters, who are prepared to hold politicians accountable. And we overwhelmingly believe that abortion should be covered by health insurance (76 percent) and support the right of women to have access to affordable abortion care in our own communities (71 percent).

In a few short months, the Supreme Court will decide whether we regain the progress promised by the sweat and toil of our mothers and grandmothers, or slide back. And a few months after that, voters will have an opportunity to chart the future of our nation. Those who oppose Black reproductive autonomy have set their game pieces across the map. It is my fervent hope and prayer that these dominoes of oppression will begin to topple, helping to make way for a brighter future for Black women and girls, the future we’ve been fighting for generations, a future long-awaited, and even longer overdue.

Photo: Shutterstock

Marcela Howell is the Executive Director for In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda. Ms. Howell is a nationally-recognized policy and communications expert who has worked on a range of domestic and international issues, including: health care reform, CEDAW ratification, and a well-woman health standard. A long-time activist on reproductive health and rights issues, she has worked in government at the local, state, and federal levels. Her efforts to expand the women's movement in California led to her serving in a number of leadership positions within the movement, including being elected to two terms as chair of the Women's Caucus of the California Democratic Party, serving on the board of directors of NARAL, Women's Campaign Fund, and the California Women's Vote Project. As a political consultant in California for over ten years, Ms. Howell specialized in helping women run for elected office. Ms. Howell is the author of Walk in My Shoes: A Black Activist’s Guide to Surviving the Women's Movement.

By Brittany Mostiller-Keith

When I discovered I was pregnant, time stopped. In 2007, I was a mother of three small children, and the youngest was five months old. I was working part-time. The pay barely covered my rent and my family and friends were in no position to help out financially. We were all surviving day-to-day.

By Jada Jefferson

It’s about 10:15 on a Tuesday night. While the majority of my Facebook timeline is going in on how great the season finale of Tyler Perry’s The Haves and the Have Nots was, I come across a post of one of my followers that read, “This #ShoutYourAbortion campaign is making me sick.” I, being the inquisitive self-proclaimed feminist that I am, decided to click on the hashtag to see what the fuss is about.

by Joséphine Kabambi

It's September and Pope Francis has recently arrived in the United States. Between the Secret Service’s Pope blockade in Philadelphia’s Center City, confusion and frustration about SEPTA transportation service, and the growing appeal of skipping town altogether, the Pope's visit to Philadelphia has certainly given us much to talk about. But as a Christian and dedicated Pope watcher working at an abortion access organization in Philadelphia, I can't help but notice that the Pope's visit coincides almost exactly with the 39th anniversary of the Hyde Amendment, a federal legislative provision voted on yearly which denies low-income women coverage for abortion. Although Pope Francis himself has maintained an anti-abortion stance, his calls to challenge systems of oppression that perpetuate economic inequality have felt both refreshing and relevant to my work.

by Atima Omara

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t be driving long distances by yourself,” said my husband.

by Saaraa Bailey


I was twenty-three when I had my abortion. While many see this as an adamant age to begin a family, I simply wasn’t ready. Burdened with the tab of my education and intellectual ambition, I was unable to care for myself, let alone a child.

by Michelle Denise Jackson

On June 30th, 2014, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Hobby Lobby and other businesses whose owners had deeply-held religious beliefs could refuse to pay for certain types of birth control for female employees who had the company’s health insurance plan. Hobby Lobby’s reasoning being certain types of birth control methods, like the IUD and Plan B, prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman’s uterus. Without implantation, the fertilized egg is expelled from the woman’s body, and they view this as abortion. This is scientifically and medically incorrect. Hormonal IUDs and emergency contraception work the same way as other hormonal birth control methods: preventing an egg from being released from the ovaries; thickening cervical mucus to make it harder for sperm to travel through the uterus to fertilize an egg; and thinning the uterine lining. And while thinning of the lining does make it more difficult for a fertilized egg to implant, a fertilized egg is not yet a baby. It is not even an embryo or fetus.

The Supreme Court today rejected Massachusetts' effort to enforce a 35-foot buffer zone around abortion clinics.

The 9-0 decision is a free-speech victory for opponents of abortion. It upholds the rights of “sidewalk counselors” who wish to speak to young pregnant women to persuade them against having an abortion.

African-American teenagers are more than twice as likely to get an abortion than the national average. This statistic prompts the discussion as to whether or not if abortion in teenage years has any connection with the infertility issues or diseases African-American women suffer from later on in life.