Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth (Anthropologies of American Medicine: Culture, Power, and Practice) - Softcover

Davis, Dána-Ain

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1479853577 ISBN 13: 9781479853571

Verlag: New York University, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

Winner, 2020 Senior Book Prize, given by the Association of Feminist Anthropology

Winner, 2020 Eileen Basker Memorial Prize, given by the Society for Medical Anthropology

Honorable Mention, 2020 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing, given by the Society for Humanistic Anthropology
Finalist, 2020 PROSE Award in the Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology category, given by the Association of American Publishers

A troubling study of the role that medical racism plays in the lives of Black women who have given birth to premature and low birth weight infants
Black women have higher rates of premature birth than other women in America. This cannot be simply explained by economic factors, with poorer women lacking resources or access to care. Even professional, middle-class Black women are at a much higher risk of premature birth than low-income white women in the United States. Dána-Ain Davis looks into this phenomenon, placing racial differences in birth outcomes into a historical context, revealing that ideas about reproduction and race today have been influenced by the legacy of ideas which developed during the era of slavery.
While poor and low-income Black women are often the "mascots" of premature birth outcomes, this book focuses on professional Black women, who are just as likely to give birth prematurely. Drawing on an impressive array of interviews with nearly fifty mothers, fathers, neonatologists, nurses, midwives, and reproductive justice advocates, Dána-Ain Davis argues that events leading up to an infant's arrival in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and the parents' experiences while they are in the NICU, reveal subtle but pernicious forms of racism that confound the perceived class dynamics that are frequently understood to be a central factor of premature birth.
The book argues not only that medical racism persists and must be considered when examining adverse outcomes-as well as upsetting experiences for parents-but also that NICUs and life-saving technologies should not be the only strategies for improving the outcomes for Black pregnant women and their babies. Davis makes the case for other avenues, such as community-based birthing projects, doulas, and midwives, that support women during pregnancy and labor are just as important and effective in avoiding premature births and mortality.

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Dána-Ain Davis is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Urban Studies, Director and Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, and Director, Center for the Study of Women and Society, CUNY Graduate Center. She is author, co-author, or co-editor of five books, including our Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth, which received 2020 Honorable Mention for the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing; was a finalist for the 2020 PROSE AWARD, given by the Association of American Publishers; and was listed as one of seven books on anti-racism in New York Magazine.

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Reproductive Injustice

Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth

By Dána-Ain Davis

New York University Press

Copyright © 2019 New York University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4798-5357-1

Contents

List of Table and Illustrations, vii, 
Preface, ix, 
Introduction, 1, 
PART I, 
1. Premature Predicaments, 29, 
2. Into the NICU, 59, 
3. Pregnancy and Prematurity in the Afterlife of Slavery, 89, 
WITNESSING A BIRTH: AN INTERLUDE, 115, 
PART II, 
4. Saving the Babies, 121, 
5. Narrowing the Gap of Black Women's Burden, 145, 
6. Radical Black Birth Workers, 169, 
Conclusion, 199, 
Acknowledgments, 207, 
Notes, 211, 
Bibliography, 219, 
Index, 241, 
About the Author, 

CHAPTER 1

Premature Predicaments

It was not natural. And she was the first. Come from a country of many tongues tortured by rupture, by theft, by travel like mismatched clothing packed down into the cargo hold of evil ships sailing, irreversible, into slavery.

— June Jordan, Some of Us Did Not Die (2002)

When my babe was born, they said it was premature. It weighed only four pounds; but God let it live. I heard the doctor say I could not survive till morning. I had often prayed for death; but now I did not want to die, unless my child could die too. Many weeks passed before I was able to leave my bed. I was a mere wreck of my former self. For a year, there was scarcely a day when I was free from chills and fever. My babe also was sickly. His little limbs were often racked with pain. Dr. Flint continued his visits, to look after my health; and he did not fail to remind me that my child was an addition to his stock of slaves. ... As the months passed on, my boy improved in health. When he was a year old, they called him beautiful. The little vine was taking deep root in my existence, though its clinging fondness excited a mixture of love and pain. When I was most sorely oppressed I found solace in his smiles. I loved to watch his infant slumbers; but always there was a dark cloud over my enjoyment. I could never forget that he was a slave. Sometimes I wished that he might die in infancy. God tried me. My darling became very ill. The bright eyes grew dull, and the little feet and hands were so icy cold that I thought death had already touched them. I had prayed for his death, but never so earnestly as I now prayed for his life; and my prayer was heard. Alas, what mockery it is for a slave mother to pray back her dying child to life!

— Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)

This epigraph is from an autobiographical narrative written by Harriet Jacobs under the pseudonym of Linda Brent, which is how I will refer to her in this chapter. Incidents chronicles the excruciatingly painful life of a girl born around 1813 in North Carolina and forced into bondage in the Flint household in 1825 around age twelve. Brent's life was cloaked in abuse enacted by her owner, Dr. Flint, a physician, who emotionally abused and threatened her, as did his wife, Mrs. Flint, who despised her. Brent informs readers that she was also in a sexual relationship with an older man: a white lawyer, Mr. Sands — who ultimately became a congressman. While that relationship appears to be one into which she entered of her own accord, it is difficult to embrace the characterization that a fifteen-year-old enslaved girl "chose" to have sex with an older white man. If nothing else, it was a survival strategy — a move to ward off Dr. Flint's advances. Mr. Sands impregnated Brent when she was fifteen, and she subsequently gave birth to her son, Benny, described in the epigraph. At twenty, Brent was pregnant again and this time had a daughter, Ellen. Both children, fathered by Sands, were Flint's property. Believing that if she ran away Flint would sell her children to their father, Mr. Sands, Brent hid for seven years in the attic crawl space of her grandmother's shack.

Brent's story haunts the more contemporary stories told in this book in its evocation of the temporal persistence of Black women's premature births. Several compelling themes emerge from this excerpt, which speak to my aims here. This book represents a vantage point of reproduction that has been overlooked in the anthropological literature, that of Black women. It serves to illustrate how archival sources, of which slave narratives are but one example, can be used to contextualize current issues. In this book, the archives consist of materials — narratives, medical and popular journals, and autobiographies, among other sources. The time period of these documents ranges from the 1700s to the fairly recent past. Notably, the archival sources and primary documents elucidate contemporary concerns. Some aspects of Brent's account of the premature birth of her son — the actual event and ensuing angst — echo those by the contemporary Black women whose stories we will hear. Black women's reproductive lives have historically been controlled by a predominantly white medical profession (J. L. Morgan 2004; Schwartz 2006). This fact directs us to consider that Linda Brent's owner was a physician. Even though medical knowledge — especially knowledge of reproductive health — was nascent at the time, that does not preclude raising questions about the medical care that Brent, as a Black woman, received. Indeed, the question is an entrée into considering the present-day prenatal and obstetric care Black women receive in light of their high rates of adverse reproductive outcomes. These are outcomes that exist despite advances in medical knowledge.

Brent's account enables consideration of three questions this chapter seeks to answer. First, the passage suggests that prematurity is defined based on weight. Brent's son, Benny, was not expected to live because he "weighed only four pounds" at birth. But what is prematurity, and has race played a role in its definition? Although one might suspect what may have led Brent to give birth prematurely, no cause is mentioned in the narrative. Thus, the second question concerns: What is the etiology of premature birth? And third, what do Black women's narratives about pregnancy and prematurity tell us about their medical care and race? These initial questions are important because reproductive disparities have beleaguered Black women for more than two centuries in the United States. During the antebellum period, infant mortality rates overall in America were excessive, but enslaved women lost nearly 50 percent of their children (Berry and Alford 2012). Linda Brent's narrative demonstrates this disparity. Her experience as described in Incidents affords us one way to think about the issue of pregnancy and premature birth — from Black women's standpoint. This is important, especially given the limited attention Black women's reproduction has received (except, see Mullings and Wali 2001; Bridges 2011; D. E. Roberts 1997).

When Linda Brent gave birth in the 1830s, prematurity and infant mortality were events in the lives of many enslaved women — indeed, of most women. Rates of premature births were inestimable because childbirth typically took place in the home, rendering it essentially a private, familial matter. However, the consequence of premature birth, infant mortality, was recorded. Beginning in the 1850s, birth and death rates, by race — including infant mortality — were calculable. We know that, just twenty years after Linda Brent gave birth prematurely...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: New York University
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1479853577
• ISBN 13: 9781479853571
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande