Mississippi is the most unsafe state for a Black baby to be born. Each year, Black mothers and babies in Mississippi experience the highest rates of fetal deaths, C-sections, premature births, low birth weight babies, and infant mortality in the U.S.  

Poverty and obesity are factors, but the leading cause is a failed healthcare system driven by expediency, profits, classism, racism, and sexism, a system that treats pregnancy as a disease and female bodies like commodities where physicians don’t listen to women but routinely administer unnecessary medical inductions and C-section deliveries, the no 1 surgery in Mississippi and the US, to speed up labor and birth, a medical model that significantly increases the profit margins of physicians and hospitals.

Many birth advocates are calling for change within the system, but real and meaningful change occurs in communities. They claim that addressing implicit bias will remedy the problem, but Black physicians and female physicians are also guilty of practicing as their White male counterparts.

Conversely, I believe families deserve an alternative healthcare system grounded, centered, and connected by Community, where the sanctity of women and birth are valued, birth goals and plans are respected and supported, childbirth is free of unnecessary medical interventions and scare tactics, and women are in charge of their birthing experiences.

So, rather than trying to change the broken, conventional healthcare system, I have decided to build a tried and true model: a nonprofit, charitable, community based birth center led by nurse midwives, public health professionals, and families, who will function as a team to provide evidence based, integrated healthcare centered around patients and their families to significantly enhance the prenatal experience, profoundly improve birth and breastfeeding outcomes, and to provide crucial support during the postpartum period.

Your signature will encourage Congressman Bennie Thompson to fund our proposed initiative to build the State’s first community birth center and guest home for women traveling long distances from maternity deserts. He has it within his authority to fund the project through the annual U.S. Appropriations Bill, Community Project Fund, which was created by Congress to “meet the urgent needs of their communities”.

Let’s build a new lane!