Micaela Berry-Smith Gives an Overview of the Reproductive Justice: Reproductive Justice (Part 1 of 2)
Micaela Berry-Smith comes from a long line of people involved in medical vare beginning with her great, great, great grandma who served as a midwife when she was enslaved in Kentucky in the 1800s.
By Jonathan Gramling
Micaela Berry-Smith, the program manager of maternal and child health initiatives at the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness, has deep family-tree roots in the area of medicine, roots that stretch back to at least the early 1800s in Antebellum Kentucky.
“The wealthier plantations would have your slave population midwife who would also serve as the doctor and the pediatrician to make sure that everyone stays healthy,” Berry-Smith said. “You aren’t going to make more money if your slaves are sick. You have to do something. And my great, great great grandmother was a midwife on the plantation that she was enslaved at. And she was kind of like the medicine doctor. She would deliver all the babies. She would make concoctions for colds and things like that. One of her grandsons, my great grandpa became a doctor and served in the African American community. I come from a generation of Black doctors who have made changes in the United States. And my dad is in the medical field.”
Also in her family tree is a cousin, the late Julian Bond who was one of the Greenville, South Carolina students who staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in 1960 and would later become chair of the National NAACP board of directors. And so it is no surprise that Berry-Smith is doing the work that she does.
“I come from this rich history of reproductive justice,” Berry-Smith said. “It’s in my blood to change things.”
Berry-Smith was drawn to the Madison area by the 2014’s Race to Equity Report published by Kids Forward and became a doula.
“I was always a partner with the Foundation, especially in 2016-2017 as Lisa Peyton-Caire was bringing more maternal and child health initiatives, more attention to it in a broader spectrum,” Berry-Smith said. “What I loved about Lisa was she was already in Black women’s health care. And she was noticing that her focus was really on heart care because we know that diabetes and heart health is the number one reason why Black women pass at an early age. What she wasn’t aware of earlier was the Black maternity mortality rate that was happening here in Wisconsin, the Black maternity and infant mortality rate here in Wisconsin. It was one of the highest in the United States. That’s what really got me into doula work. And so when you think about reproductive justice, Black maternity and infant mortality rate is under the umbrella of reproductive justice.”
And what is reproductive justice?
“It’s about liberation and empowerment,” Berry-Smith said. “It’s the freedom to autonomy. If you think about it, although African Americans have been free for over 250 years, we still operate a lot under those rules and regulations that were created when we were kidnapped and brought here. I was having a discussion with my dad about when he went through medical school in the early 1980s and how there were a bunch of young Black students who wanted to liberate the medical system because when you think of how some of these medicines and operations come about, it’s because they were operating on enslaved people without compassion. I really feel at the heart of reproductive justice is the desire for compassion. What we are saying is that our lives matter, being able to choose to have children or to choose not to have children as a Black-bodied feminine, whether you identify as a woman or not. If you are able to bring a child into this world, you are still under the umbrella of these disparities that are happening here in Wisconsin. It was really important to us to not just talk about health, but also talk about the justice within the birth system.”
As a program manager, Berry-Smith manages multiple programs that support families in the maternal and child health, which is perinatal to 5-years-old, with support and resources.
The health care system is a behemoth in the United States, as it accounts for approximately 17 percent of the country’s GNP. The health care system is one of the largest employers in Dane County. And so, more than likely, it will tgake a sustained effort over many years to change the tide reflected in the disparities of maternal and child morbidity for Black women and their families. And it is a system that doesn’t necessarily encompass all of the maternity help that Black women need.
“One of the ways that we provide reproductive justice at the Foundation is we have created a very consistent stream of income for our doulas,” Berry-Smith said. “It values their work and the way that they are able to be seen as part of the medical care team. They aren’t medical professionals like primary care providers or nurses. But they are part of that medical care team because they are trusted advocates who are able to support a pregnant person through the perinatal and postpartum journey.”
The Foundation has partnered with the Dane County Health Council — composed of community representatives and representatives from the major health organizations in Dane County — to create a pilot program called Connect RX.
“Connect RX, which is under our Saving Our Babies umbrella that we started in 2019,” Berry-Smith said. “And the community asked for this. With our Connect RX programming, all of the clients who come through that referral service from all clinics in Dane County are able to get a doula, a community health worker, have a connection to Anesis Therapy, and a lactation support specialist. What that does is support them in every aspect from perinatal to postpartum and through that first year of the baby’s life.”
In times past when there was a greater sense of community among neighbors, pregnant women were surrounded by the support they needed during their pregnancies. But now in an era when people don’t know their neighbors, other means of support need to be created to ensure healthy outcomes from perinatal to postpartum periods in a Black mother’s life.
“There are community hardships that you go through during parenting in Madison,” Berry-Smith said. “It can kind of get lonely, especially if you birthed during COVID-19. It can be a very lonely journey. And we’ve seen that depression and suicide ideations have gone up unfortunately during the COVID-19 pandemic. What we see here as birth justice here at the Foundation is birthing people and Black women being able to have access to humane life-sustaining care. That comes with partnering with insurances and having that as a service. That is something that we are advocating for and trying to partner with these insurance companies here in the state of Wisconsin who impact Dane County to say, ‘You should be paying our doulas because it is improving your rates. It’s improving the outcomes for you in the long run. Let’s uplift this as well.’”
Reproductive justice is about diversity, equity and inclusion permeating the medical system at all levels to ensure equal resources and support for all during the perinatal and postpartum periods in a woman’s life. Nothing less will ensure the elimination of Black maternal and child morbidity rates in the state of Wisconsin.
Next issue: What reproductive justice looks like