Voices for Birth Justice Website Has Launched!

The Voices for Birth Justice community now as a website! In honor of World Prematurity Day (November 17th), we launched our online platform to share the powerful stories of birth justice advocates who have positive impacts in Black and Brown communities and to connect pregnant people to resources and information that could improve their birth outcomes.

Visit Voicesforbirthjustice.org!

Thank you to all of our inspiring partners, especially PTBi's Community Advisory Board, who have come together to conceive and shape the campaign. Learn how the campaign was created on our About Us page. 

We are excited to be continually spotlighting more advocates and working with community experts to build out additional resources in the coming months and beyond, so stay tuned for more. 

Featured Voices

See our Full Storyteller gallery


5 Ways to Help Our Voices Be Heard

We are thrilled to be providing the following social media tip sheet to help you more easily share our content with your network. 

Become a Voice for Birth Justice
 


Voices for Birth Justice

Every day, Black and Brown women and people experience stress from walking in a world that disrespects them through racist systems and interactions. The lifelong exposure to this stress builds in the body over time and is driving an epidemic of poor birth outcomes in our communities, like babies being born too early.

Black and Brown families have a right to a healthy prenatal, labor and postnatal experience. The health of their communities depends on it.

We are fighting for this right in the form of community-based, culturally-responsive care and support. We, “Voices”, are some of the advocates that help bring those services to these communities.

Why We Need Birth Justice

Around 1 in every 11 babies in California are born too early (prematurely). Many babies born prematurely will have healthy outcomes, but some face months in intensive care; some will face a lifetime of health challenges and some won’t survive. 

Black and Brown people are the most impacted by premature birth; these families are the ones most at risk. Because being born early can run in families, it can have rippling effects - causing significant physical, emotional and financial burdens - from one generation to the next.

What We Are Doing

We are advocates from all different backgrounds and communities who believe passionately that all families deserve healthy starts to life. Many of us are Black and Brown and were born too early ourselves, had a premature birth, or have lost loved ones to premature birth. Many of us were inspired to join the Birth Justice movement after our own experiences with racism and disrespectful maternity care. We became doulas, midwives, infant feeding specialists, physicians, researchers, and social workers working together to create a village of support and protection for pregnant persons of color.

We are sharing our stories to help raise awareness of the link between racism and premature birth as well as other poor birth outcomes while connecting pregnant people to the advocates, organizations and resources who are helping counteract the risks.