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What It’s Like to Be Black and Pregnant in Alabama
As politicians debate abortion bans, the health risks associated with having a baby in rural areas are only becoming greater
Brianna Moore rubs her growing belly and her face turns serious. Her fourth child is due in three months and the idea of returning to the hospital for another birth terrifies her.
Would she have another botched epidural, she wondered? Would she again lie there terrified only to feel disregarded and disrespected by the hospital workers?
“I feel like I would have been better off staying at home,” Moore says of her first three hospital births.
During the birth of her daughter, Aubrielle, in 2013, Moore says she temporarily lost sensation in her left leg after the epidural. Still, the labor took too long and despite her protests, she had to be induced. With her third child, she decided to cut down her time at the hospital as much as possible, and didn’t arrive until she was nine centimeters dilated. Even though the hospital visit was shorter, it was still traumatic. Her doctor was not on call and she believes that the hospital workers who attended to her disregarded her concerns and questions because she was just another patient to shuffle through.
So this time, Moore is considering having her baby at home with no doctors and no medication. If anything goes wrong, she will plan to call her doula, who will offer support but not medical advice.
It’s not an option she takes lightly. She knows the health risks of a home birth and has heard rumors that unless she immediately takes her child to the hospital for a checkup, someone might call Child Protective Services on her. Ideally, Moore would hire a midwife, but she cannot afford the $3,700 price tag. So, the best of her bad options, she says, is to try to do it alone.
