Authored by Sunshine Muse, Executive Director of Black Health New Mexico
Protecting Black women and people is an act of justice that is centuries overdue. Harmful health outcomes, police brutality, misogynoir, and laws that disproportionately target and separate Black families from one another are a few examples of why this protection is needed.
SB96, which passed in the NM 2021 Legislative Session, and Gov. Lujan Grisham’s Black Maternal Health Week (BMHW) Proclamation center community, acknowledge health inequities and echo national directives to prioritize Black maternal health. Together, Gov. Lujan Grisham and President Biden’s Black Maternal Health Week proclamations call upon us all to actively de-construct racism in medicine, through the leadership of Black mamas and the communities most impacted by disparate maternal health outcomes. Both proclamations amplify the voices of Black mamas and center the values and traditions of the reproductive and birth justice movement, acknowledging its origins, and the racist origins of health inequities in our country.
High rates of maternal mortality and morbidity among Black and Indigenous women deeply impact the health outcomes of BIPOC families, especially the wellbeing of our mamas, infants and families. We have a right to better health outcomes, and safer lives, which includes: more seats at the table, more voices with those seats, and more power with those voices!
No crafting or changes to maternal health policy or practice need be made in the state of New Mexico, or the United States of America, without Black and Indigenous women-led organizations and Black and Indigenous birthing people at the table. We do not need people to speak for us, we are fully capable of speaking for ourselves. Racism is going out of fashion and the infantilization of Black and Indigenous people, that dismisses us as thought and policy leaders, is no longer acceptable in an equity based world.