How We Value Black Women’s Health in the US and Abroad

Our Body Politic

Diaspora Farms, LLC

News Commentary, Documentary, Society & Culture, Government, News

4.8 • 658 Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, host Farai Chideya interviews longtime TV and film producer and now co-director of the Sundance award-winning documentary Aftershock, Tonya Lewis Lee and one of the film’s featured subjects, reproductive justice advocate Shawnee Benton-Gibson. Benton-Gibson’s daughter died in October 2019 after giving birth – one more fatality in a long epidemic of Black maternal mortality. Farai also speaks to Lewis Lee one-on-one about how her work in media and experience as a children’s author led to her work as a maternal health advocate. Then, in our weekly segment Sippin’ the Political Tea, Farai interviews legal analyst and NYU Law professor Melissa Murray and University of Pennsylvania Ph.D History candidate Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon about the impact and implications of the highly politicized conviction of WNBA star Brittney Griner in Russia.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, folks. We are so glad that you're listening to Our Body Politic. If you have time,
0:15.2	please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcast. It helps other listeners find us and we read them for your feedback. We'd also
0:22.6	love you to join in financially supporting the show if you're able. You can find out more at
0:27.1	ourbodypolitic.com slash donate. We are here for you, with you and because of you. Thank you.
0:37.0	This is Our body politic.
0:38.3	I'm Farai Chidea.
0:40.3	In October 2019, Shamani Gibson died just two weeks after giving birth to a baby boy.
0:47.3	At only 30 years old, Gibson's death was one more fatality in a long epidemic of black maternal mortality.
0:55.4	Shawnee Benton Gibson, Shamani's mother knows this problem well.
0:59.2	She's a licensed clinician and author, and she was an outspoken reproductive justice advocate
1:04.3	and activist long before the issue hit so close to home.
1:08.8	I never thought that this would happen to my family.
1:11.4	Yes.
1:11.8	Because I do reproductive justice work.
1:14.8	But, you know, just also, why wouldn't it?
1:17.7	We're black and brown.
1:19.1	You know, she's a woman.
1:19.9	She was having a baby.
1:20.9	So why would we think we would be exempt?
1:22.6	Because we have the knowledge.
1:24.5	In the United States, black women pregnant and giving birth die at a rate three times that of
1:30.1	white women. The film Aftershock co-directed by Tanya Lewis Lee and Paula Isolt won a special
	...

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