"They Threw a Piece of Me in the Trash like It Was Nothing:" Incarcerated Black Women, Birth Justice, and Dismantling the Master's House

While pregnancy is often considered an important, and sacred time, for those trapped within the carceral net (e.g., incarcerated pregnant women), it can re-enact trauma, and re-victimize people, especially those with a history of violence, particularly domestic violence and sexual abuse, with major health implications. This is furthered compounded by the fact that prisons do not meet the most minimum basic healthcare standards that have been set but various public health groups for women’s reproductive and maternal care. However, Black women bear the brunt of these issues. Black women are disproportionately at risk of sexual and domestic violence, and they are more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications, at much higher rates, than any other group. Still, they are frequently criminalized and incarcerated at twice the rate of white women, and yet their stories are rarely foreground in our understanding of mass incarceration at the intersections of pregnancy, reproductive justice, and the criminalization of women’s bodies. The social work profession, given its social justice mandate, and role within the carceral system, has an important obligation to Black women, and all systematically marginalized women caught in the carceral net, to understand the ways that mass incarceration disrupts, and violates, women’s reproductive rights, and implications for their wellbeing, and overall health.

Methods: This critical phenomenological study recruited key informants (formerly incarcerated pregnant Black women) and key stakeholders (doulas, social workers, advocates, health care providers, and activists). A total of 20 interviews were conducted (N=9 key informants and N=11 key stakeholders). Key informants and key stakeholders were recruited through purposive snowball sampling. Semi-structured interviews were used with key informants to understand how they narrate their experiences with the criminal legal system as pregnant, and parenting, mothers through a Black feminist, anti-carceral, and anti-violence frameworks. Interviews were audio-recorded and ranged between 60-90 minutes. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and coded thematically using NVivo qualitative software, guided by the principles of thematic content analysis.

Results: Qualitative interviews revealed several primary themes and sub-themes about trauma, abandonment, loss, and fear. However, paramount among all my data-driven themes is the idea that maternal care for incarcerated women must help address their prior history of violence, particularly, sexual exploitation and trauma, and domestic violence as prenatal care can often reenact their trauma and cause women to feel re-victimized

Conclusions and Implications: Examining mass incarceration through the experiences of Black women can help to move beyond reform, which often leads to strengthening state violence through more surveillance and policing of communities of color, towards a vision that will end mass incarceration, especially the criminalization and incarceration of all women. This study is rooted in emancipatory and anti-carceral frameworks and strategies that are guided by reproductive justice movement. Adopting these frameworks across social work will help the profession move away from its own history of internalized racism towards an anti-racist, abolitionist, and anti-carceral social work profession. Doing so will help the social work profession to be more closely aligned with its social justice roots and mandate.