Black Birth Work: Reproductive Violence, Resistance, Care, and Love in the Arizona Borderlands

Nine Black birth workers serving in the state of Arizona participated in this autoethnographic project. Birth workers are laborers who work with pregnant, birthing, and postpartum people. This includes doulas, midwives, lactation consultants, nurses, obstetricians and more. Participants in this study primarily identified as doulas, midwives, or lactation consultants. I conducted semi-structured interviews with the participants, followed by one or two post visits to verify the data and ask additional questions. Participants reported various reasons for entering birth work that coalesced around a desire to support pregnant, birthing, and postpartum people across their reproductive timeline. Additionally, participating birth workers recounted their preparation to enter the profession and disclosed their thoughts about the perinatal bodymind. Moreover, participants demonstrated the prolific nature of obstetric violence in hospital-based birthing practices along with the ways they resist this violence. Demonstrating their enactment of birth work as activism, participating Black birth workers recalled instances where they have served as a safe and supportive presence for a range of pregnancy outcomes. As participants attested, birth work can be costly for them. They shared the demands of the work as well as the compensation they receive. Furthermore, participants build birth work formations to support their work affectively and materially.