OUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE BOROUGH OF KINGS
BY JULIANNE MCSHANE
This show is for everyone and their
mother.
A Brooklynite launched a podcast
in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic
that focuses on another health
crisis: maternal mortality and reproductive
injustice in New York City,
where Black women are eight to twelve
times more likely than white women to
die of childbirth-related causes.
Birth Justice NYC aims to broaden
listeners’ understandings about reproductive
justice by showing the full
range of challenges that Black people
face while giving birth and raising
children in the Big Apple, according to
its creator and host.
“People need to understand that
birth justice is about more than just
the moment of birth,” said Taja Lindley,
who records the weekly show from
her Crown Heights apartment. “What
I’m hoping with the podcast is that we
can zoom out and connect all of those
dots. Maternal mortality is important,
but it’s not the only part of this conversation.”
Through interviews with activists,
scholars, and doulas, Lindley delves
into some of the lesser-discussed past
and present facets of reproductive oppression
that most impact Black New
Yorkers, including the history of how
the city’s child welfare system criminalizes
poor parents and how local
doulas have pivoted to helping people
become parents during the pandemic.
Lindley, an interdisciplinary artist,
honed her knowledge around reproductive
justice through her studies
at New York University, where she
studied public policy and knowledge
COURIER L 24 IFE, SEPT. 25-OCT. 1, 2020
production with a focus on health and
women of color, and through subsequent
roles with the city Department
of Health and Mental Hygiene, she
said.
Many of Lindley’s guests developed
expertise from their own lived experiences
of motherhood and medical racism,
the host added.
“The people who come to this work
usually have direct experiences with
the issue that they’re dealing with,”
Lindley said. “A lot of people do this
work for their own survival and the
survival of their communities.”
In New York City, maternal mortality
rates for Black women are four
times the national average. In Brooklyn,
pregnancy-related deaths have
been particularly high in recent years.
Since Lindley fi rst launched the
podcast in June, Birth Justice NYC
has become only more relevant than
its topics already were, due to a series
of tragic events: in July, Sha-Asia Semple,
a 26-year-old Black woman, died
while giving birth to her daughter,
Khloe, at Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Woodhull
Medical Center. Semple died of
cardiac arrest during an emergency
caesarean section, according to a close
friend, who added that Washington
had a healthy pregnancy and no preexisting
conditions.
The young mother was at least the
third Black person to die of childbirthrelated
complications this year. Lindley
characterized the trio of events
as products of systemic racism in the
medical fi eld, adding that maternal
mortality is not a new problem and
has only been made worse by the pandemic.
“When we talk about the racialized
gap in different health outcomes, it’s
not because of race, it’s because of racism.
We need to grapple with racism
inside of the healthcare industry,” she
said. “It is a healthcare problem that
has been exacerbated by a healthcare
system that’s already been overloaded
because of COVID — under-resourced,
understaffed, and all the things that
come with the pandemic.”
The host noted that while she does
not disavow the medical fi eld entirely,
she believes its practices towards and
relationships with Black patients must
change. She uses Birth Justice NYC to
amplify the voices of people who are
generally silenced — or worse — by
the healthcare system, she added.
“I come from a family of healthcare
practitioners. I’m not here to demonize
anyone, but we call it into question on
the podcast. The institutions have to
shift, the practitioners have to shift,”
she said. “The whole point is to center,
hear, and believe people, because they
don’t necessarily always feel that inside
of the healthcare system.”
Lindley is tentatively planning to
launch the podcast’s second season
early next year, pending both the pandemic
and how the presidential election
unfolds, she said. In the meantime,
she is collecting stories from
listeners about their own reproductive,
parenting, and postpartum experiences
to feature in future episodes,
she added.
Pass the mic
Brooklynite launches podcast on Black
maternal mortality, reproductive justice
LISTEN UP: Birth Justice NYC host Taja Lindley. Photo by Jim Tripp