Irin Carmon

At the time, he had gold teeth.

They marked him down as somebody who was a potential problem so that every interaction that they had with him, there was security there.

And so he now says, I wish I had gone to jail that night.

I wish I had fought harder.

It's too much to put on any individual to advocate that way.

The research that shows that having a doula leads to dramatically better outcomes in maternal morbidity and mortality, what that's telling us is that just having one person advocate for you and be a set of eyes in birth can make a difference between whether you suffer major physical trauma in addition to what might be involved in your birth.

And so what does that say about the strain on our systems at this time of deep vulnerability?

And there's understandable deference in something that really truly can be an emergency.

But I think not having that trust built up from the beginning, and there are certain communities who have historic reasons to mistrust the medical system.

If you don't have that trust built up to begin with, if you don't feel listened to, then when somebody tells you that you need a certain kind of emergency care, are you going to accept it or are you going to ask more questions?

So the stories in my book are deeply challenging, but there are also moments, I think, of beauty and of hope.

I'm really inspired by Jose trying to make births safer.

I'm inspired by Dr. Yashica Robinson, a Black woman born and raised in the South, provided abortions for as long as she could, now is fighting for safe births for the patients who are left behind in Alabama.

And it's precisely because these moments in people's lives are so intimate and personal and can be so beautiful and so joyful that we need to expose what's wrong with them

And we can also talk about, we can open up that space to say, this can be a source of beauty.

This can be a source of joy.

And I think pregnancy is also all of us operating in a web of needing each other.

It's your body, it's your pregnancy, it's your choice.

But there's also an interdependency in the people who care for you and the people who will care alongside of you if you choose to have a child.

And for me, it's been beautiful and rewarding, and I wish for safety and joy and love for anybody who wants to be pregnant and carried to term, because it could be so much better than what we have right now.