I'm Martina Abraham Zalunga, and I'm the New York-based co-host of Natal.

In episode one, you heard Maisha's story, and just how difficult it is for black parents to be heard and believed by medical providers, even in emergencies.

Her story was crazy, but I wasn't surprised.

To have agency in medical spaces as a black woman or

non-binary person is a constant fight. But to really understand how something like what happened

to Maisha can happen over and over again, we have to understand the history of obstetrics and gynecology.

So in this episode, we'll do just that.

You're listening to Natal.

You're listening to Natal.

You are listening to Natal.

You're listening to Natal.

A podcast about having a baby.

Having a baby.

Having a baby. Having a baby. Having a baby while black.

But I think we have to really start to pivot seriously towards looking at how institutions and the histories of those institutions just perpetually fail people and particularly fail people who are just historically more marginalized.

That's Dr. Mimi Niles, but she goes by Dr. Mimi.

She's a mother, researcher, and third-generation midwife based in New York City.

Health care is one example of a very large, vast, deeply problematic institution.

And we know that for black people, if we think about the history of blackness in America,

you cannot divorce that from the history of enslavement. And so I think every sort of disparity

and every sort of inequity has sort of played itself out in the bodies of

black people. Just like we have to have honest conversation in obstetrics around who J. Marion

...