Miriam Zoila Pérez is a Cuban-American writer, activist and consultant. Pérez is the founder of Radical Doula, a blog that covers the intersections of birth activism and social justice from a doula’s perspective. You might also know her from her work at Feministing.com, where she was an Editor for four years, during which time the site was awarded the Hillman Prize for Blog Journalism. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, RH Reality Check, and The American Prospect and she is a frequent contributor to Colorlines. She has received various awards and recognitions for her work, including a 2010 Barbara Seaman Award for Activism in Women’s Health from the National Women’s Health Network. For more about her work, visit miriamzperez.com.
A recent New York Times article detailed the health effects of immigration on the Latino community, but it neglected to note one of the likely causes of those health outcomes: racism.
The American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecology now says that we should “let nature take its course” during labor. But that change could take years to go into effect, affecting pregnant individuals in the United States and abroad.
Doulas have increased in number and popularity in recent years. But as a whole, what are we working toward? The goal of having a doula for every birth may not be feasible. It also may not bring about the radical change we seek.
In the campaign’s SMS exchange about Anaya, the pregnant teen character who is bullied at the prom, she is no longer called a “fat loser”—now she’s just called a “loser.” Progress?
The New York Human Resource Administration’s new teen pregnancy prevention campaign takes shame as a prevention tactic to an entirely new level.
Two weeks ago the American Association of Birth Centers and the American College of Nurse-Midwives released the findings from a new study.The big picture finding is this: for low-risk women giving birth, birth centers are an alternative that provides a safe, supportive, and cost-saving environment in which to give birth.
Reproductive justice can’t be easily communicated in a sound bite or phrase. Does it matter?
Each year the anniversary of Roe brings the reminder that people of color are disproportionately impacted by the current state of abortion access, but often missing from the public dialogue about Roe and abortion.
Rather than trying to convince people, especially women, to give birth in the socially-acceptable and medically-sanctioned 15-year window between college and age 35, why not change the way our society support families, so that whenever the moment for parenting arises, people have the support they need to do it successfully?
There are many things that are different about the experience of carrying a pregnancy to term versus choosing to terminate, but one place where you’ll often notice a stark difference is in language.
