Why and How I Am Choosing to Be a Mother
Despite the all-too-real threat of maternal mortality, medical racism, and homophobia, I’m ready to be a Black, queer mom
When I’m making a choice about my own body, I often feel as if there are five other people in the room. My decision to pursue motherhood as a thirtysomething Black queer woman has been no different. Trying to conceive means I have to negotiate reproductive, gender, racial, and economic politics. It also means I have to negotiate the realities of an ongoing Black maternal mortality crisis alongside my desire to be joyful in this process. Choosing to conceive and raise a Black child feels like an act of resilience in a country that seems committed to taking life and love away from my people.
As much as I want my very personal decision to remain my own, the reality is that our government, health care system, and society influence what I have to fight for and against in order to parent. Be it the involuntary experiments Dr. J. Marion Sims, often called the father of modern gynecology, performed on enslaved Black women or the forced sterilization of Black women, including freedom fighters such as Fannie Lou Hamer, this country has a history of violating bodies like mine. The thought of this reality is, at times, disempowering.
