Papers by Chinyere Oparah
Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy and Childbirth, second edition, 2024
Advocacy efforts led by formerly incarcerated people challenge prevailing social and reproductive... more Advocacy efforts led by formerly incarcerated people challenge prevailing social and reproductive justice movements by centering the needs of the most vulnerable pregnant and parenting women. In raising their collective voices to call attention to the dehumanizing conditions within women's prisons, they break down the walls between the reproductive justice and abolitionist movements and generate an intersectional, embodied abolitionism rooted in the visceral and lived experiences of pregnant bodies and the powerful testimonies of incarcerated birthing people.
Black women’s intersectional and coalition praxis is transforming the abolitionist, reparations and reproductive justice movements.
Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy and Childbirth, second edition, 2024
Despite recommendations by ACOG, for too many pregnant individuals the aphorism "Once a C-section... more Despite recommendations by ACOG, for too many pregnant individuals the aphorism "Once a C-section, always a C-section" continues to be true.
A BAC has significant benefits, including a lower risk of infection and other complications from the surgery, less pain after delivery, a greater opportunity to bond early on with the newborn, fewer days in hospital, a shorter recovery time at home, and a greater sense of empowerment and agency in the process of birth. Regardless of these benefits, too many pregnant individuals who could safely have a trial of labor after cesarean are denied that opportunity due to outdated hospital policies; unsupportive, unskilled, and fearful medical practitioners; and inadequate advocacy for those seeking a VBAC. Dissident OB/GYNs can play a particularly powerful role in educating their peers, modeling best practices, and encouraging colleagues to unpack biases from their training and consider alternatives.
Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy and Childbirth, second edition, 2024
For all pregnant people and their families, the COVID-19 pandemic curtailed rights and access as ... more For all pregnant people and their families, the COVID-19 pandemic curtailed rights and access as hospitals, clinics, and public health agencies attempted to slow the spread of the virus by shifting to telehealth, banning doulas from hospital births, and reducing frontline services. But shifts in policies and racialized patterns of inadequate care left Black birthing people particularly vulnerable to neglect, disempowerment, and traumatic hospital experiences. At the same time, Black birthing people found strength and resilience with support from Black birthworkers, families, and communities of Black women. Lack of access to care and services during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly during the prenatal period, necessitated a reliance on a village outside of the walls of the clinic. In addition, Black pregnant people, disillusioned by biomedicine and reluctant to accept an even lower standard of care, reached out to Black doulas and midwives for support during birth, and postpartum, and turned to homebirth as a strategy to reclaim their pregnancy and birth experiences. Rather than seeing this shift toward birthing in community as a short-term characteristic of birthing under lockdown, Black communities, birthworkers, and birth justice advocates can seize this moment, as an invitation to a new vision of pregnancy, birth, and parenting.
Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy and Childbirth, second edition, 2024
This introduction to the second edition of Birthing Justice explores the complexity of Black wome... more This introduction to the second edition of Birthing Justice explores the complexity of Black women's and birthing persons' experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, which are shaped simply by violence and coercion by patriarchal institutions but also by the multifaceted ways in which gender interacts with interlocking systems of race, class, age, ability, sexuality and nation. The chapter re-examines the history of birth in the U.S. from the perspective of the subjugated standpoints of Black women, revealing the "obstetrical apartheid" at the foundation of gynecology as well as the preventable deaths caused by segregated medicine. By unpacking divergent strands in the movement to transform childbirth, the chapter documents and celebrates the rise of a birth justice movement rooted in love as an insurgent praxis. The book contains new chapters on Black birth during the pandemic, breastfeeding activism, transnational solidarities, doula activism and the power of Black women's collective action.
Black Feminist Sociology, 2021
Frontiers in Sociology
This article documents the experiences of Black birthworkers supporting pregnant and birthing peo... more This article documents the experiences of Black birthworkers supporting pregnant and birthing people and new mamas during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Building on the methodology and outcomes of Battling Over Birth–a Research Justice project by and for Black women about their experiences of pregnancy and childbirth–the authors utilized a “community-based sheltered-in-place research methodology” to collect the narratives of Black birthworkers, including doulas, certified nurse-midwives (CNMs), homebirth midwives, lactation consultants, community health workers and ob/gyns. The article examines the impact of restrictions put in place by hospitals and clinics, including inadequate or inconsistent care, mandatory testing, separation from newborns, and restrictions on attendance by birth support people, including doulas. Birthworkers shared the innovative approaches that they have devised to continue to offer care and the ways that they have expanded the care they offer...
I Birthing Histories 1 Queen Elizabeth Perry Turner: "Granny Midwife," 1931-1956 Darlin... more I Birthing Histories 1 Queen Elizabeth Perry Turner: "Granny Midwife," 1931-1956 Darline Turner 2 Regulating Childbirth: Physicians and Granny Midwives in South Carolina Alicia D. Bonaparte 3 Between Traditional Knowledge and Western Medicine: Women Birthing in Postcolonial Zimbabwe Christina Mudokwenyu-Rawdon, Peggy Dube, Nester T. Moyo, and Stephen Munjanja II Beyond Medical versus Natural: Redefining Birth Injustice 4 An Abolitionist Mama Speaks: On Natural Birth and Miscarriage Viviane Saleh-Hanna 5 Mothering: A Post-C-Section Journey Jacinda Townsend 6 Confessions of a Black Pregnant Dad Syrus Marcus Ware 7 Birth Justice and Population Control Loretta J. Ross 8 Beyond Silence and Stigma: Pregnancy and HIV for Black Women in Canada Marvelous Muchenje and Victoria Logan Kennedyiv Contents 9 What I Carry: A Story of Love and Loss Iris Jacob 10 Images from the Safe Motherhood Quilt Ina May Gaskin and Laura Gilkey III Changing Lives, One Birth at a Time 11 Birthing Sexual Freedom and Healing: A Survivor Mother's Birth Story Biany Perez 12 Birth as Battle Cry: A Doula's Journey from Home to Hospital Gina Mariela Rodriguez 13 Sister Midwife: Nurturing and Reflecting Black Womanhood in an Urban Hospital Stephanie Etienne 14 A Love Letter to My Daughter: Love as a Political Act Haile Eshe Cole 15 New Visions in Birth, Intimacy, Kinship, and Sisterly Partnerships Shannon Gibney and Valerie Deus 16 I Am My Hermana's Keeper: Reclaiming Afro-Indigenous Ancestral Wisdom as a Doula Griselda Rodriguez 17 The First Cut Is the Deepest: A Mother-Daughter Conversation about Birth, Justice, Healing, and Love Pauline Ann McKenzie-Day and Alexis Pauline Gumbs IV Taking Back Our Power: Organizing for Birth Justice 18 Unexpected Allies: Obstetrician Activism, VBACs, and the Birth Justice Movement Christ-Ann Magloire and Julia Chinyere Oparah 19 Birthing Freedom: Black American Midwifery and Liberation Struggles Ruth Hays 20 Becoming an Outsider-Within: Jennie Joseph's Activism in Florida Midwifery Alicia D. Bonaparte and Jennie Joseph 21 Beyond Shackling: Prisons, Pregnancy, and the Struggle for Birth Justice Priscilla A. Ocen and Julia Chinyere Oparah
Research Justice: Methodologies for Social Change, 2015
Using a “research justice” lens, this book chapter explores what happened when a small group of b... more Using a “research justice” lens, this book chapter explores what happened when a small group of black women decided to take back control over the research process. It documents their journey from forming a community-based organization, to becoming co-researchers, and designing and carrying out research that they believed should have integrity and humanity, as well as scholarly rigor and legitimacy. The co-authors discuss how the research journey empowered and strengthened them, and the struggles and challenges they experience. The chapter aims to encourage communities to determine for themselves what knowledge would be useful to them, and how it should be obtained, disseminated, and utilized. It also aims to challenge professional and academic researchers to examine their complicity with research injustice, and to dismantle power inequities that remain at the heart of traditional research practices.
Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing, 2015
The East Bay Community Birth Support Project provides entry into the health professions for previ... more The East Bay Community Birth Support Project provides entry into the health professions for previously incarcerated women and enhances access to culturally appropriate doula support for low-income communities. Sixteen women of color were trained as doulas: eight were identified as low-income and eight were previously incarcerated. Qualitative focus group data from program participants showed an increase in empowerment, improved assessment of skills, and confidence in perceived ability to provide doula support. To date, no incidents of recidivism have occurred.
The Imperial University, 2014
UCLA Women’s Law Journal, 2012
In this article, I develop an alternative "antiracist gender-queer" theoretical framework for fem... more In this article, I develop an alternative "antiracist gender-queer" theoretical framework for feminist engagements with crime and punishment. I first provide a discussion of transgender as a collective political identity that is internally differentiated by race, class, gender, nationality, and citizenship. I then explore feminist resistance to embracing a more inclusive and complex understanding of gender identity. Third, building on feminist re-search into the "pathways to imprisonment" of women in conflict with the law, I elucidate three stages of gender policing and racialized punishment in the lives of gender nonconforming people: 1) marginalization and discrimination from childhood onward, 2) imprisonment and 3) post-incarceration sentences.
These processes constitute what I call the (trans)gender entrapment of gender nonconforming prisoners. Finally, I explore the
implications of this discussion for feminist scholarship.
Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 2009
This article examines the experiences of black, gender-oppressed women, and transgender activists... more This article examines the experiences of black, gender-oppressed women, and transgender activists in the anti-prison movement in the U.S. and Canada. By foregrounding the experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming activists, the author makes visible the reality of gender complexity and multiplicity within women's prisons and the anti-prison movement. The article explores the activists' motivations for involvement, and barriers to participation, and explores spirituality as a source of resilience and guidance. It examines the participants' political analysis and abolitionist visions and explores the possibility of "non-reformist reforms" that take up the challenge of a radical, antiracist, gender justice perspective. The article posits the existence of a unique abolitionist vision and praxis, centered on the participants' direct experience of gender oppression and racialized surveillance and punishment. This perspective works toward dismantling penal structures while simultaneously seeking the abolition of racialized gender policing and an end to violence against gender non-conforming prisoners. This article is dedicated to the memory of Boitumelo "Tumi" McCallum. Her spirit is a continued inspiration in the struggle against intimate and state violence.
Since the 1970s, exponential growth in the use of incarceration in the United States, combined wi... more Since the 1970s, exponential growth in the use of incarceration in the United States, combined with racial targeting in the use of state surveillance and punishment, has marked the prison as a primary site of contemporary black liberation struggles. Black women and girls, as well as other low-income people of color, have been particularly devastated by prison expansion and the accompanying withdrawal of resources from community infrastructure and economic supports for low-income families, in part in order to fund costly law-enforcement and prison budgets.1
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Papers by Chinyere Oparah
Black women’s intersectional and coalition praxis is transforming the abolitionist, reparations and reproductive justice movements.
A BAC has significant benefits, including a lower risk of infection and other complications from the surgery, less pain after delivery, a greater opportunity to bond early on with the newborn, fewer days in hospital, a shorter recovery time at home, and a greater sense of empowerment and agency in the process of birth. Regardless of these benefits, too many pregnant individuals who could safely have a trial of labor after cesarean are denied that opportunity due to outdated hospital policies; unsupportive, unskilled, and fearful medical practitioners; and inadequate advocacy for those seeking a VBAC. Dissident OB/GYNs can play a particularly powerful role in educating their peers, modeling best practices, and encouraging colleagues to unpack biases from their training and consider alternatives.
These processes constitute what I call the (trans)gender entrapment of gender nonconforming prisoners. Finally, I explore the
implications of this discussion for feminist scholarship.
Black women’s intersectional and coalition praxis is transforming the abolitionist, reparations and reproductive justice movements.
A BAC has significant benefits, including a lower risk of infection and other complications from the surgery, less pain after delivery, a greater opportunity to bond early on with the newborn, fewer days in hospital, a shorter recovery time at home, and a greater sense of empowerment and agency in the process of birth. Regardless of these benefits, too many pregnant individuals who could safely have a trial of labor after cesarean are denied that opportunity due to outdated hospital policies; unsupportive, unskilled, and fearful medical practitioners; and inadequate advocacy for those seeking a VBAC. Dissident OB/GYNs can play a particularly powerful role in educating their peers, modeling best practices, and encouraging colleagues to unpack biases from their training and consider alternatives.
These processes constitute what I call the (trans)gender entrapment of gender nonconforming prisoners. Finally, I explore the
implications of this discussion for feminist scholarship.