Once protected only for economic gain, Black women’s wombs now face a new threat — state control, medical dismissal, and preventable death in childbirth.
By Rev. Jamesina E. Greene, Contributing Writer, This Woman Knows
Recently, I read two news reports from Texas and Indiana about two Black queens in labor — inside medical facilities, surrounded by trained professionals — yet left to suffer as their bodies signaled that life was emerging. Their pleas were met with indifference. Their pain was disregarded. Their humanity was ignored.
As a Black woman who nearly lost her life during childbirth, I felt a familiar ache rise in me — shock, grief, heartbreak, and finally a righteous anger that refuses to subside. Every time I hear these stories, I am forced to confront a truth many prefer to avoid: America has never known what to do with the bodies of Black women except exploit them or abandon them.
In November, while honoring the memory of my late sister Sylvia — who died in 2005 after multiple misdiagnoses during pregnancy — I interviewed a young woman on my podcast who nearly bled to death because HELLP Syndrome went undetected. Different states. Different years. Same story. Same disregard.
These are not anomalies. They are chapters in a centuries-long pattern.
The Bitter Irony: From Reproductive Profit to Reproductive Neglect
During slavery, the Black woman’s womb was treated as a financial asset. Slaveholders measured our foremothers’ “breeding potential,” tracked their cycles, and forced pregnancies because every new baby meant increased profit. Their worth was not tied to their humanity — only to the wealth their bodies could produce.
Here lies the painful truth: The only time America valued Black women’s reproduction was when it increased someone else’s bottom line. Our suffering was irrelevant. Our pain, immaterial.
And today? The exploitation looks different, but the root remains unchanged.
A Modern Echo of an Old Violence
The nation’s disregard for Black women’s bodily autonomy showed itself again when a Black woman in Texas was kept on life support against her family’s wishes because she was pregnant. She was brain-dead. Her organs were failing. Yet the hospital treated her not as a person, but as a container for a fetus — a vessel to be controlled.
The state’s interpretation of the anti-abortion law overrode her dignity. Her family begged for her body to be allowed to rest. They were ignored.
Eventually, a baby was delivered by C-section — born with profound medical complications, the tragic result of developing inside a mother whose body was shutting down. Now the family faces lifelong medical challenges and crushing hospital debt. Some call it government overreach. Others call it a sick experiment.
But any Black woman watching recognized it instantly: the same plantation-era logic — our bodies used when useful, discarded when not.
When our wombs produced profit, they were protected. Now that they don’t, we are dismissed — even unto death.
Fast-Forward to Today: The Pendulum Swings, but the Mindset Holds
We live in a nation where Black women are:
– more likely to die in childbirth,
– more likely to have symptoms ignored,
– less likely to receive timely intervention,
– more likely to be labeled “dramatic” or “exaggerating” even when in crisis.
This is the same America that once forced pregnant Black women to labor in fields and now refuses to believe them when they say they’re in pain.
I once went to the ER, barely able to stand, and was told I was “just another one of them looking for pain meds.” To them, my pain was not real — because I was not real. Not fully human. Not fully deserving.
The continuity is devastating: Black women’s bodies are valued only when they serve someone else’s agenda — economic, political, or ideological.
The Modern Landscape of Disregard
You see it everywhere:
– in hospitals telling Black women to “calm down” during labor,
– in birthing centers delaying care until it’s too late,
– in ERs where symptoms are minimized,
– in medical schools still influenced by debunked racial myths,
– in policies treating our bodies as battlegrounds, not lives worthy of protection.
We are still fighting to be believed. Fighting to be treated. Fighting to live.
Why This Fight Is Personal — and Why It Must Be National
As a Black woman, mother, grandmother, and minister, this is not theoretical for me. It is ancestral. It is spiritual. It is generational. Every Black woman who walks into a labor and delivery unit carries the weight of knowing she may not be heard — and may not make it out.
We have survived too many funerals. We have buried too many dreams. We have learned to fear the very rooms meant to deliver life.
That fear is not irrational. It is inherited. It is lived.
The Call to Accountability
Sympathy will not save Black women’s lives. Accountability will. We must demand:
– mandatory bias and trauma training for all clinicians,
– consequences for hospitals that ignore or delay care,
– expanded doula and midwifery access in Black communities,
– transparency when preventable injuries or deaths occur,
– federal recognition of Black maternal mortality as a public health emergency.
Black women’s survival cannot depend on luck, privilege, or the kindness of a single nurse. It must be guaranteed by a just, responsive, unbiased system.
Our Bodies Are Sacred — Always Have Been
Despite everything this country has done to us, there is a resilience in Black women that cannot be legislated, denied, or erased.
Our bodies remain sacred. Our wombs remain powerful. Our lives remain worthy.
And our cries — in pain, in protest, in labor — deserve to be heard the first time, every time.
This is not only a medical crisis. It is a moral one. A spiritual one. A national one. Until Black women can give birth without fear, this country cannot call itself just.
