Ungoverned Bodies: The Right to Choice in a Post-Roe Era
On the morning of June 24th, just before the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, I waited for birth worker, activist and reproductive psychologist, Raven Freeborn (they/them) to hop on our Zoom call. When they joined, a bit frazzled, they excused their tardiness by explaining that they just got off a string of planning calls to organize resources and protests in response to the decision. I told them I couldn’t think of a more appropriate reason to be late for this particular conversation.
Over the course of an hour, we talked about birth work, death work, the fall of Roe v. Wade and the misunderstood notion of choice. Shortly after we hung up, Roe v. Wade was officially reversed, triggering restrictive abortion laws across the country and effectively ending access to safe abortions for millions. As I struggled to make sense of it all, I was grounded by this conversation with Raven, whose words remind me of our lineage of healing, resilience and autonomy.
Raven, you are a birth worker, a doula and a therapist; all centered in the reproductive space. How did you come into this work?
I was called to birth work by just showing up before I was even trained after learning about the maternal health crisis in 2012 or 2013. I heard that the maternal health and infant health outcomes for Black women and Black birthing people in the United States are worse than in third-world countries. I was politicized when Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, died of postpartum complications, completely preventable.
After Erica Garner's passing, I trained as an abortion doula with DC Doulas for Choice in 2017. I'm now leaning more into traditional cultural postpartum birth work and also death work.
That's quite a mouthful when you say ‘death work.’ Can you talk about what it means when you use that term?
Mamas, aunties and grandmothers always use to say: “I brought you into this world and I’ll take you out.” That is a saying that has historical relevance because before the public health department came in and contributed to the whitewashing and ultimately the erasure of our granny midwives, our midwives were both the people who brought you into the world. They literally brought you in and took us out.
We culturally adopted that to [mean], “I have more authority over you than you think you have over yourself.” But what I take it to mean is that there is a cultural and community responsibility to be a part of people's first birth, whether that's their physical one or the ways they may have to birth and rebirth. So that comes into the decision to not carry forward a pregnancy or to not even contribute to the reproduction of life. And that requires that we get really comfortable with grief and death.
Can you explain a bit more about what full-spectrum birth work is?
The two things I hold in the world are legacy healing and therapy services, which are a home for our best and better wellness and wholeness. That could be through the Western modalities of therapy — I am a licensed clinical social worker and a licensed independent clinical social worker in DC. But it's also through healing, so there's a lineage that I follow as a healing justice practitioner. I bring those two things together.
And bringing those elements together allows you to offer a wide range of care. What are your clients seeking when they come to you?
For Black women and Black fems and birthing people, the moment that you enter the medical-industrial complex or the system where you may be giving birth or receiving care, it is in itself a systemic fight. Both because of the trauma that birth and the gynecological field had on our mothers and ancestors who were operated on to develop these tools and procedures.
What currently exists is not honoring and respecting the experiences of Black women beyond criminalization. That's what our medical system is poised to do at this moment. So you need someone to both bear witness to and be an advocate alongside your desires.
Also, to bear witness to you, which means to both reveal the things that may be hard to face and to say, Yes, I did see this. You were silenced, you were ignored. You have been discounted. So in bearing witness to you, I may be holding up a mirror and saying, “When you experienced this, what was that like for you? Can I tell you what I saw as a part of that experience? It looked like your physician wasn't paying attention to you.”
“The moment that you enter the medical-industrial complex or the system where you may be giving birth or receiving care, it is in itself a systemic fight.”
What do the people need to know about doulas and the importance of their presence specifically in the Black community?
I want Black women and Black birthing people to know that there's a history.
There's a cultural history of people walking alongside you as we navigated our reproductive realities and made choices. But within this system of care, we have created the process of isolation where you are furthered from care and move toward criminalization, stigma, and shame. So if you feel lonely [in these choices], it's not a byproduct of having made yourself alone. It's because you had to enter a system that is designed to do exactly that.
For that reason, doulas are most necessary. And I don't mean like, you know, the vibe of a doula. I mean, someone who's radically going to be like, “This is the option we're engaging in. Is this the choice that brings value to your life? Yes? Let's move forward there. No? Are we still gonna move forward? Yes? Let's move forward there.”
So often, women are placed into a state of panic and then become reliant on surgery, which can be incredibly dangerous. Doulas can be that voice in the room to calm the panic so better choices can be made.
One of my favorite adages when it comes to birth is that everything is cool until eight people roll up in the room. If you got eight people in the room, we are now in a state of medical crisis and emergency. They're preparing for something they may not be speaking [about]. So I will say things like, “did you see that happen? I saw it. You wanna talk about that?”
I'm just on this ride with you.
“Within this system of care, we have created the process of isolation where you are furthered from care and move toward criminalization, stigma, and shame.”
Obviously, a huge part of your work is postpartum care. As we wait for the decision to come down regarding Roe, what do you think will happen when choice is taken away?
I’ve spent a lot of time working with people in the perinatal and postpartum experience.
One of the first questions I asked them was, “did you feel like you had a choice in the matter of pregnancy and birth?” A lot of folks say, no. So we have to sit with that and talk about why. What were you more beholden to? Was it your marriage? Was it the value of your family? Was it the stigma and social shame? That reality is illuminating conflict because there is now this living, breathing human to care for.
How do people typically respond? What are they beholden to?
There's an expectation that you act with integrity which is informed by your cultural standard. Then there are norms based on whatever your nervous system has fixated on. So if your nervous system has fixated on stress, crisis, panic, fatigue or the constant racing of your life, that is the norm. You will unconsciously and maybe unbeknown to you, select an option that aligns with that norm. This is why people select an option and then feel like they didn't have a choice. Well, if your nervous system is saying panic, stress, fatigue and not stabilization, peace, flexibility, adaptation, then there's rigidity in your norms and you're not able to shake that.
There are these rules created by ideologies that are manifested by people with a level of cultural power. As an African American growing up in the cultural south of Texas, a rule and standard for me was faith. So, what does that rule dictate for me? What is the ideology of faith? Does it allow for the procedure of abortion?
We have to get away from “pro-life versus pro-choice” because choice isn't just one stagnant thing. It is actually this vibrating frequency across your expectations.
Today will be historical, no doubt. What are your hopes and fears for Roe V. Wade and the future of reproductive justice?
There are bounty laws right now for people who have received abortion care or are presumed to have terminated. Those bounty laws are possible because criminalization is the standard against those who are not moving with the ideology of suppressed choice and liberation.
So this political moment is not a staircase that just emerged and now we're going to walk ourselves up into the post-Roe v. Wade world. We're already high in the sky of criminalization. So there's going to be this conflict between what is ethically and morally expected of people and what has to happen to determine the quality of another person's life.
“We have to get away from “pro-life versus pro-choice” because choice isn’t just one stagnant thing. It is actually this vibrating frequency across your expectations.”
And the work — talk about the work needed in a post-Roe era. What do you want people to do?
I want people to imagine what it would look like if their bodies were ungovernable. Meaning that you had the ability to be affirmed in the most harmonious structure to access your wellness and your wholeness.
When you imagine that, imagine who is alongside you, imagine what it would take to get there and then know that activism and organizing isn't something left to the streets of Instagram and TikTok anymore. There are people who are cornerstones and ready and willing to hold you in the imagination of what it could be like when you are ungovernable.
I'll be in the streets. You can find me east of the Anacostia River in DC. I'm ready to talk to people about that.
There are these rules created by ideologies that are manifested by people with a level of cultural power. As an African American growing up in the cultural south of Texas, a rule and standard for me was faith. So, what does that rule dictate for me? What is the ideology of faith? Does it allow for the procedure of abortion?
We have to get away from “pro-life versus pro-choice” because choice isn't just one stagnant thing. It is actually this vibrating frequency across your expectations.
Today will be historical, no doubt. What are your hopes and fears for Roe V. Wade and the future of reproductive justice?
There are bounty laws right now for people who have received abortion care or are presumed to have terminated. Those bounty laws are possible because criminalization is the standard against those who are not moving with the ideology of suppressed choice and liberation.
So this political moment is not a staircase that just emerged and now we're going to walk ourselves up into the post-Roe v. Wade world. We're already high in the sky of criminalization. So there's going to be this conflict between what is ethically and morally expected of people and what has to happen to determine the quality of another person's life.
And the work—talk about the work needed in a post-Roe era. What do you want people to do?
I want people to imagine what it would look like if their bodies were ungovernable. Meaning that you had the ability to be affirmed in the most harmonious structure to access your wellness and your wholeness.
When you imagine that, imagine who is alongside you, imagine what it would take to get there and then know that activism and organizing isn't something left to the streets of Instagram and TikTok anymore. There are people who are cornerstones and ready and willing to hold you in the imagination of what it could be like when you are ungovernable.
I'll be in the streets. You can find me east of the Anacostia River in DC. I'm ready to talk to people about that.
