Birth Justice Tribunal Report Back

Released December 2024

“Trust resistance comes with people confronting pain…
and wanting to do something to change it.” - bell hooks

One in five pregnant people experiences discriminatory mistreatment during pregnancy and childbirth in the United States. Despite growing national attention on perinatal health inequities, too few options exist to seek- and find- accountability for these harms. Community-led strategies have emerged in response to this failure to account for this discrimination. This report amplifies these strategies, focusing in particular on those that emerged from the 2023 Birth Justice Tribunal. 

On October 6th and December 1st, 2023, twenty-six brave families came forward with their experiences of violence and discrimination during the perinatal period at the 2023 Birth Justice Tribunal events in New York and Memphis. Honoring and believing in the power of centering people who have been directly impacted, this report weaves together their individual stories, anchoring its discrimination analysis in the voices and vision of people who have experienced obstetric violence and obstetric racism first-hand. The report concludes with community-led calls to action that we trust and believe hold the power to disrupt harm, and radically expand accountability for these harms.