Seed Library
Welcome to the Seed Library. Here, we begin the loving act of seed saving for our movement.
Seeing each birth justice actor as a seed, one of many that make up birth justice’s bounty, we can start to take roll.
Who has answered the birth justice call? What does that look like for each of us?
How do we, individually and collectively, define birth justice?
Navigating our local environments across the United States and Tribal lands, birth justice actors have had no choice but to be creative, innovative, and pave new paths forward. We have all had to adapt, and from this adaptation, a cornucopia of seed varieties has sprung forth. We look different, feel different, smell and taste different. We grow differently and thrive differently. And so, while the birth justice actors cradled here in our library are but a sampling of the broader movement, through this seed saving, the vastness of birth justice’s biodiversity emerges.
Seed Library
Interviewees (by Region)
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Yuki Davis 🍃 Northern Bush Honeysuckle
Boston, MA
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Efe Osaren 🪻 Heart Leaved Aster
New York, NYFarah Diaz-Tello 🌿 Crested Wood Fern
New York, NYKimberly Seals Allers 🫘 Wild Ginger
New York, NYMimi Bhatt (Niles) 🌿 Cinnamon Fern
New York, NYVanessa Caldari 🍃 Cuabilla (Sea Amyris)
Puerto Rico
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Carol Sakala 🌱 Wild Comfrey
Washington, D.CCheyenne Varner 🌾 Broadleaf Cattail
Richmond, VAMichelle Drew 🏵️ Spiked Wild Indigo
Wilmington, DENoelene Jeffers 🪻 Harvestbells
Washington, D.C.
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Breana Lipscomb 🍁 Southern Sugar Maple
Atlanta, GAJamarah Amani 🌾 Tidalmarsh Amaranth
Miami, FLK Sanderson 🌼 Whorled Milkweed
Miami, FLKaren A. Scott, MD, MPH, FACOG 🍁 Sassafras
Nashville, TNStephanie Mitchell 🌻 Narrowleaf Sunflower
Gainesville, AL
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Dorian S. Odems 🍓 Running Strawberry Bush
Toledo, OH
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Corrine Sanchez 🌽 Po’suwaegeh Blue Corn
Northern New MexicoVarshna Narumanchi 🌱 Curly Mesquite
Austin, TX
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Hakima Payne 🌼 Longleaf Summer Bluet
Kansas City, MOOkunsola M. Amadou 🌾 Purple Lovegrass
Ferguson, MO
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Andi Maven 🌱 Black Canyon Gilia
Colorado
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Amanda C. 🌳 Pacific Madrone
San Francisco, CAAmanda Singer 🌾 Vanilla Sweetgrass
Window Rock, AZKiki Jordan 🪷 Waldo Manzanita
Oakland, CANina Martin 🍁 Fragrant Sumac
Bay Area, CADr. Sayida Peprah-Wilson 🌼 Coastal Sand Verbena
Los Angeles, CA
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Kalpana Krishnamurthy 🪻 Woody Rockcress
Portland, ORMelissa Cheyney 🌸 Alpine Laurel
Corvallis, ORSaraswathi Vedam 🌲 Mountain Hemlock
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Definitions of Birth Justice
Movements like ours advance thanks to culture makers who do the work of imagining, defining, and describing new worlds. We want to thank Jamarah Amani and Anjali Sardeshmukh and Southern Birth Justice Network in particular for their foundational Birth Justice Framework and Birth Justice Bill of Rights.
As the use of the term “birth justice” has proliferated across the country, we wondered if there might be an emergent definition. We asked our interviewees how they define birth justice, and in attempting to craft a singular definition from their responses, found that all that we are, all that we do, all the ways in which we view our work, defy such simplification.
To truly understand it, birth justice calls upon us to open our hearts and minds to complexity [Complexity], to be attuned to nuance and difference [Seeding Liberation].
Birth justice is not an elevator pitch, not a public health checklist, not a magic pill, not a sterile instrument, and certainly not a sheepskin cloak for wolves to wear. Birth justice is a social movement. It makes waves alongside other movements (like reproductive justice), sometimes propelling the same, indistinguishable wave. Birth justice is a glacier, carving its way across the land to unearth new valleys. Birth justice is a paradigm shift in care, how we as a society approach care—care for each individual, care for society as a whole, and care for all those who came before and will come after.
Click each seed variety to hear, in our own words, how we, in our resplendent diversity, define our movement.
The following audio clips were taken from interviews conducted for this landscape analysis. Some are in direct response to the question, “How do you define birth justice?” while others are snippets that we found speak to this question. Some interviewees opted to have their quotes rerecorded with others’ voices or to appear only as text.
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“I think about birth justice being one's ability to decide how they experience childbirth. I consider it a deeper, more focused level of reproductive justice for those that do choose to give birth and choose to carry their pregnancy. How will they experience that? Who will be their provider? Where will they deliver their baby? Those types of decisions. Birth justice is them being able to have that self-determination of what that looks like and what it means for them and their families.”
Who We Are
What We Do
Recommended Reading
Like reproductive justice, birth justice emerges out of concepts and practices that have existed for a long time. It isn’t new, but it is being named and taken up as a practice in this specific time and place as a specific response to the conditions of the present day. Placing this landscape analysis in conversation with those who have done the important (and tricky!) work of articulating and documenting the birth justice ecosystem over time, we offer this recommended reading list. This set of sources is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather provide a launching point for ongoing engagement and study.
The citation for this landscape analysis is as follows: Elephant Circle. (2024). Birth Justice Landscape Analysis. https://www.birthjustice.community/
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🎙️ Podcast Black Feminist Rants. Black Feminist Rants.
📝 Report Forward Together (then Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice). (2005). A new vision for advancing our movement for reproductive health, reproductive rights and reproductive justice. https://forwardtogether.org/tools/a-new-vision/
📝 Report Forward Together. (2020). The road to reproductive justice: Native Americans in New Mexico. https://forwardtogether.org/tools/the-road-to-reproductive-justice-native-americans-in-new-mexico/
📚 Book Luna, Z. (2020). Reproductive rights as human rights: Women of color and the fight for reproductive justice. NYU Press.
📝 Report Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center. (2020). Indigenous women’s reproductive justice agenda. https://www.nativeshop.org/wp-content/uploads/RJ-agenda-final-2020.pdf
🎙️ Podcast Rewire News Group. Boom! Lawyered.
📚 Book Ross, L. J., & Solinger, R. (2017). Reproductive justice: An introduction. University of California Press.
📚 Book Ross, L. J., Roberts, L., Derkas, E., Peoples, W., & Bridgewater Toure, P. (Eds.). (2017). Radical reproductive justice: Foundations, theory, practice, critique. The Feminist Press.
📖 Peer-Reviewed Article Scott, K. A., Bray, S., & McLemore, M. R. (2020). First, do no harm: Why philanthropy needs to re-examine its role in reproductive equity and racial justice. Health Equity, 4(1), 17–22. https://doi.org/10.1089%2Fheq.2019.0094
💻 Blog Post Sins Invalid. (2022, June 29). Reproductive justice is disability justice. Sins Invalid. https://www.sinsinvalid.org/news-1/2022/6/29/reproductive-justice-is-disability-justicela-justicia-reproductiva-es-justicia-de-discapacidad
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🌐 Webinar Amani, J. (2022, February 24). Birth justice is Black midwifery: The hxstory of a movement [Online presentation with slides]. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/681585768
📚 Book Bonaparte, A. D., & Oparah, J. C. (Eds.). (2024). Birthing justice: Black women, pregnancy, and childbirth (2nd ed.). Routledge.
📚 Book Davis, D.-A. (2019). Reproductive injustice: Racism, pregnancy, and premature birth. NYU Press.
📖 Peer-Reviewed Article Diaz-Tello, F., & Paltrow, L. (2010). Birth justice as reproductive justice. https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3695078
📚 Book Oparah, J. C., Arega, H., Hudson, D., Jones, L., & Oseguera, T. (2018). Battling over birth: Black women and the maternal health care crisis. Praeclarus Press.
🗞️ Article Seals Allers, K. (2020, November 19). The black maternal mortality crisis is not for sale. Refinery29. https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2020/11/10179076/black-women-maternal-mortality-racism-business-interest
📝 Report Visionary Allies LLC. (2019). Funding equity: Birth justice and human rights in maternal and infant health. https://www.canva.com/design/DADc-jw-jag/_fbwp5ftv4XwD_gTOyt8rw/view
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📚 Book Cooper Owens, D. (2017). Medical bondage: Race, gender, and the origins of American gynecology. The University of Georgia Press.
🎙️ Podcast Crooked Media. This Land, Season 2.
📚 Book Ehrenreich, B., & English, D. (2010). Witches, midwives, & nurses: A history of women healers (2nd ed.). The Feminist Press.
📚 Book Ehrenreich, B., & English, D. (2011). Complaints & disorders: The sexual politics of sickness (2nd ed.). The Feminist Press.
📖 Peer-Reviewed Article Ehrenreich, N. (1993). The colonization of the womb. Duke Law Journal, 43(3), 492-587. https://doi.org/10.2307/1372827
📖 Peer-Reviewed Article Geronimus, A. T. (1992). The weathering hypothesis and the health of African-American women and infants: Evidence and speculations. Ethnicity & Disease, 2(3), 207-221. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45403051
📖 Peer-Reviewed Article Harris, C. I. (1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1707-1791. https://harvardlawreview.org/print/no-volume/whiteness-as-property/
📖 Peer-Reviewed Article Nelson, C. (2007). American husbandry: Legal norms impacting the production of (re)productivity. Yale Journal of Law & Feminism, 19. https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/facsch_lawrev/892
📖 Peer-Reviewed Article Rubashkin, N. (2022). Why equitable access to vaginal birth requires abolition of race-based medicine. AMA Journal of Ethics, 24(3), 233-238. https://doi.org/10.1001/amajethics.2022.233
📚 Book Washington, H. A. (2007). Medical apartheid: The dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present. Doubleday.
🎬 Film Welch, S. (Director). (2016). A dangerous idea: Eugenics, genetics and the American Dream [Film]. Paragon Media, & Denkmal Film.
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📖 Peer-Reviewed Article Altman, M. R., McLemore, M. R., Oseguera, T., Lyndon, A., & Franck, L. S. (2020). Listening to women: Recommendations from women of color to improve experiences in pregnancy and birth care. Journal of Midwifery & Women's Health, 65(4), 466-473. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmwh.13102
📝 Report Amnesty International. (2010). USA: Deadly delivery: The maternal health care crisis in the USA. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr51/007/2010/en/
📝 Report Declercq, E., & Zephyrin, L. C. (2020). Maternal mortality in the United States: A primer. The Commonwealth Fund. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-brief-report/2020/dec/maternal-mortality-united-states-primer
📝 Report Funders for Birth Justice & Equity. (2023). Birth Equity Funders Landscape. https://fundersforbirthjusticeandequity.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Birth-Equity-Funders-Landscape_R2-compressed.pdf
📖 Peer-Reviewed Article Julian, Z., Robles, D., Whetstone, S., Perritt, J. B., Jackson, A. V., Hardeman, R. R., & Scott, K. A. (2020). Community-informed models of perinatal and reproductive health services provision: A justice-centered paradigm toward equity among Black birthing communities. Seminars in Perinatology, 44(5). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.semperi.2020.151267
📝 Report March of Dimes. (2022). Nowhere to go: Maternity care deserts across the U.S. https://www.marchofdimes.org/maternity-care-deserts-report
📝 Report Moore, J. E., & Lusero, I. (2024). A blueprint for improving maternal and infant health outcomes under Medicaid: Recommendations from the 2023 Maternal Health Policy Equity Summit. Institute for Medicaid Innovation, & Elephant Circle. https://medicaidinnovation.org/new-report-details-path-forward-for-improving-maternal-health/
📝 Report National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Health and Medicine Division; Board on Children, Youth, and Families; Committee on Assessing Health Outcomes by Birth Settings; & Scrimshaw, S. C., & Backes, E. P. (Eds.). (2020). Birth settings in America: Outcomes, quality, access, and choice. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/25636/birth-settings-in-america-outcomes-quality-access-and-choice
📝 Report National Partnership for Women & Families. Improving Our Maternity Care Now.
📝 Report National Partnership for Women and Families. (2020). Maternity care in the United States: we can–and must–do better. https://nationalpartnership.org/maternity-care-in-the-united-states-we-can-and-must-do-better/
📝 Report National Partnership for Women and Families (2024). Realizing the transformational potential of maternity care payment reform. https://nationalpartnership.org/report/maternityapm/
📖 Peer-Reviewed Article Okiki, C., Giusmin, G., & Hunter, L. (2023). ‘Only for the white’. A qualitative exploration of the lived experiences of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic midwifery students. Nurse Education Today, 131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2023.105982
🗞️ Article ProPublica. Lost Mothers: Maternal Care and Preventable Deaths.
📝 Report Sakala, C., & Corry, M. P. (2008). Evidence-based maternity care: What it is and what it can achieve. Milbank Memorial Fund. https://www.milbank.org/publications/evidence-based-maternity-care-what-it-is-and-what-it-can-achieve/
📖 Peer-Reviewed Article Scott, K. A. (2021). The rise of Black feminist intellectual thought and political activism in perinatal quality improvement: A righteous rage about racism, resistance, resilience, and rigor. Feminist Anthropology, 2, 155-160. https://doi.org/10.1002/fea2.12045
📖 Peer-Reviewed Article Scott, K. A., & Davis, D.-A. (2021). Obstetric racism: Naming and identifying a way out of Black women's adverse medical experiences. American Anthropologist, 123(3), 681-684. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13559
📖 Peer-Reviewed Article Scott, K. A., Bray, S., & McLemore, M. R. (2020). First, do no harm: Why philanthropy needs to re-examine its role in reproductive equity and racial justice. Health Equity, 4(1), 17–22. https://doi.org/10.1089%2Fheq.2019.0094
🗞️ Article Villarosa, L. (2018, April 11). Why America’s Black mothers and babies are in a life-or-death crisis: The answer to the disparity in death rates has everything to do with the lived experience of being a Black woman in America. The New York Times Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/magazine/black-mothers-babies-death-maternal-mortality.html
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📚 Book Bridges, K. M. (2017). The poverty of privacy rights. Stanford Law Books.
📖 Peer-Reviewed Article Bridges, K. M. (2020). Racial disparities in maternal mortality. New York University Law Review, 95(5), 1229-1318. https://nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-95-number-5/racial-disparities-in-maternal-mortality/
📖 Peer-Reviewed Article Campbell, C. (2021). Medical violence, obstetric racism, and the limits of informed consent for Black women. Michigan Journal of Race & Law, 26(Special Issue), 45-75. https://doi.org/10.36643/mjrl.26.sp.medical
📖 Peer-Reviewed Article Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(8). https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8
📝 Report Funders for Birth Justice & Equity. (2023). A call to funders: Tactics in law, policy and advocacy for reproductive and birth justice. https://fundersforbirthjusticeandequity.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2023-Jan-Tactics-in-Law-Policy-and-Advocacy-Call-to-Funders.pdf
📚 Book López, I. H. (2006). White by law 10th anniversary edition: The legal construction of race (10th ed.). NYU Press.
⚖️ Brief Lusero, I., Reed, A., et. al. (2022). Mobilizing the Office for Civil Rights’ authority to address obstetric violence and obstetric racism. Elephant Circle. https://www.elephantcircle.net/circle/2023/7/18/federal-civil-rights-investigations-an-opportunity-for-accountability
📚 Book Roberts, D. (1997). Killing the Black body: Race, reproduction, and the meaning of liberty. Pantheon Books.
📚 Book Spade, D. (2015). Normal life: Administrative violence, critical trans politics, and the limits of law (2nd ed.). Duke University Press.
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🧭 Map American Association of Birth Centers. Birth Centers Regulations Map (birth center regulations by state).
🧭 Map American Association of Nurse Practitioners. State Practice Environment (Nurse Practitioner practice environment by state).
🧭 Map Big Push for Midwives. The PushMap (Certified Professional Midwife licensure by state).
🧭 Map Birth Place Lab. Access & Integration Maternity Care Mapping (midwifery integration and correlating outcomes by state).
Vedam, S., Stoll, K., MacDorman, M., Declercq, E., Cramer, R., Cheyney, M., Fisher, T., Butt, E., Yang, Y. T., & Powell Kennedy, H. (2018). Mapping integration of midwives across the United States: Impact on access, equity, and outcomes. PLoS ONE 13(2). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0192523
🧭 Map Elephant Circle. Birth Center Policy Context.
🧭 Map UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, & Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs. Birth Equity Ecosystem Map.
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📚 Book brown, a. m. (2017). Emergent strategy: Shaping change, changing worlds. AK Press.
📚 Book brown, a. m. (2019). Pleasure activism: The politics of feeling good. AK Press.
📚 Book brown, a. m. (2024). Loving corrections. AK Press.
💻 Blog Post Elephant Circle. (2023, September 22). Doula is a verb. Elephant Circle. https://www.elephantcircle.net/circle/2023/9/21/doula-is-a-verb
🗞️ Article Jorwic, N. (2023, May 19). Let’s recognize that care work is the labor that makes all other labor possible. Truthout. https://truthout.org/articles/lets-recognize-that-care-work-is-the-labor-that-makes-all-other-labor-possible/
📚 Book Kuhn, R. (2024). Somacultural liberation: An Indigenous, two-spirit somatic guide to integrating cultural experiences toward freedom. North Atlantic Books.
📚 Book Ritchie, A. J. (2023). Practicing new worlds: Abolition and emergent strategies. AK Press.
🗞️ Article Ross, L., & Nakagawa, S. (2023, July 6). Loretta Ross: ‘Don’t let the chain of freedom break at your link.’ Convergence. https://convergencemag.com/articles/loretta-ross-dont-let-the-chain-of-freedom-break-at-your-link/
📚 Book Smith, L. T. (2021). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples. Bloomsbury Publishing.
🗞️ Article Táíwò O. (2020). Being-in-the-room privilege: Elite capture and epistemic deference. The Philosopher, 108(4). https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/post/being-in-the-room-privilege-elite-capture-and-epistemic-deference
📚 Book Wall Kimmerer, R. (2015). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions.