Black midwives play an important role in ensuring Black mothers and birthing people can access prenatal care that makes them feel secure and cared for. It also improves outcomes and has been shown to improve the quality of health care people of color receive. Urban Institute, 2023
RWJF supports organizations and movement leaders working to advance reproductive justice and build collective power across communities.
We believe this includes honoring, reclaiming, and protecting Black midwifery through anti-racist policy and narrative change—and positioning midwives to lead the transformed, just health systems we are working to build together.
Reproductive justice encompasses the social, political, and economic conditions required for people to exercise bodily autonomy and to have, not have, and raise children in safe and sustainable communities.
Across the United States—and most acutely in the South—reproductive health is shaped by racialized policies, economic disinvestment, overmedicalization, and criminalization that systematically undermine bodily autonomy and drive inequities in maternal and reproductive health outcomes. Post-Dobbs v. Jackson abortion bans, surveillance regimes, and states’ refusal to expand Medicaid have deepened these harms. These harmful policies are rooted in a long history of racial capitalism, gendered labor exploitation, and state control over reproduction.
Reclaiming and protecting Black midwifery is central to this work. Black midwives were the original healthcare infrastructure for this country. Their erasure was intentional. Supporting midwives to lead community-rooted systems of care is how we build the future reproductive justice requires.
We invest in the organizations and leaders building new systems from the ground up. Our role is to resource, sustain, and protect the infrastructure communities are already creating by:
Strengthening the reproductive justice movement through long-term sustainability, power-building and leadership support, including:
Supporting the reclamation of Black midwifery to increase access to the full spectrum of respectful, community-rooted reproductive healthcare, including:
