With the sudden overturning of Roe vs Wade, it is more important than ever to give a voice to groups that are fighting for the rights of women and femme identifying folks. One such group that is fighting to make sure that women still can advocate for themselves is I Be Black Girl.

I Be Black Girl (IBBG) is a Nebraska-based organization focused on reproductive justice for Black females and feminine individuals. They are focused on the legal right to access sexual and reproductive health, as well as educate people on what their rights are in this current climate. The name comes from the famous author Bell Hooks in her book Be Boy Buzz. According to the organization’s founder, it “inspired [her] to fill spaces with what it means to exist as a Black woman, femme, or girl—where we are free to define and own that narrative.” IBBG is led by director Ashlei Spivey, who gained a master’s in urban social planning from the University of Texas at Arlington.

As it stands currently in the United States, Black women under thirty are 2-3x more likely to die from giving birth or complications afterwards. For Black women over thirty, that figure rises to 4-5x. Often these causes are from treatable or preventable conditions. IBBG’s goal is to drastically lower these numbers by helping mothers get more access to health care providers; expand policies on paid family and medical leave; work on bias training for medical practitioners; and address pay inequality for Black women in the workforce. 

The Daily Record spoke on this with Omaha Native Ziara Kýre York, a doula and midwife apprentice. She has been a doula for two years, in an effort to support her community and help Black women during childbirth, as well as other POC. She often serves lower income women to help them in this stressful process. As a doula, she is an advocate for women during childbirth, often there supporting them during the birthing process in hospitals and supporting them afterwards in their postpartum healing.

“In the last hundred years, birth has become very medicalized. It has been taken out of the hands of women.” York says, “there is this lack of education about our bodies and how they work, and so there is this lack of trust in them. Put that in combination with medical providers who have a very medicalized view of birth, they don’t necessarily see it as a physiological process of the human body, but they instead see it as an ailment or an illness or something that needs to be managed and treated.

They don’t trust in women’s bodies, they often feel the need to manage women’s bodies, and because we’re not educated on our bodies and how they work, and our rights either, unfortunately a lot of women have experiences where they are left feeling disempowered, where their choices were taken away, where they feel things were done to them. It’s important for women to be educated on their bodies. So that they know the warning signs for if they do need to get help, because unfortunately that is when most of those deaths are happening.”

IBBG have come together with many other organizations to form the Nebraska Black Maternal Health Coalition, to help with maternal health and improve the outcome of pregnancies. Members of this Coalition are the Omaha Black Doula Association, March of Dimes, Nebraska Medicine, Methodist, CHI, Nebraska Perinatal Quality Improvement Collaborative (NPQIC), Charles Drew: Omaha Healthy Start, CityMarCH, Touch of Gold, and UNMC College of Public Health.

IBBG is also helping the community by releasing grant money for Black women run projects, with a heavy focus on projects that increase supportive services, focus on health and wellness, promote education, or are youth-led endeavors. They also allow for Black women who donate to have a voice in where the money will be distributed.

The organization has advocated for many laws to be passed in our state. They have pushed for expanding affordable childcare and raising wages for Black women. As it stands from the current median wages in Nebraska, Black women in this state are currently paid $60 for every $100 of their white male coworkers. This is lower than the current national average reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has Black women paid $68 for every $100 of their white male peers.

IBBG pushed for legislation of LB 929, to extend Medicaid plans for postpartum coverage, allowing for more women to be able to heal after giving birth without worry for paying their bills. This bill has, unfortunately, been tabled due to the end of the current legislative session.

“Women definitely feel a lot of pressure to return to work,” commented York. “There’s a lot of lack of social support, and there’s a lot of lack of understanding of the postpartum process. Most people have this idea that ‘you go through the pregnancy, you have a baby, and then you just bounce back’. But the postpartum process is an entire other process within itself. It’s a healing and recovery that needs to take place.” She emphasized the importance of support for women before, during, and after giving birth. “It doesn’t take a doula; it takes a village.”

And last year they pushed for the passing of LB 451, which would prohibit an employer from discriminating towards an employee or applicant on the basis of hair texture/hairstyle historically associated with race. This law, which was passed on May 5, 2021, protects minority individuals who wear their hair natural, as many are often forced by their workplace culture or school to straighten or manipulate their hair to ‘fit in’.

York spoke on this as well. “I think it’s very good that bill was passed. Unfortunately, I have experienced discrimination for my natural hair in the workplace. And even outside of discrimination, there is a lot of prejudice for those with natural hair, especially for black women with dreadlocks. Because I wear my hair in this natural hairstyle, I’m perceived to be a lot of ways. I’m sure there’s also jobs and opportunities I haven’t gotten because I let myself be completely natural. I think it’s good that we have those protections in place. It’s unfortunate that we need them.”

Miss York spoke at the end of the interview on her wishes for the women of her community. “I would say, to every woman who is pregnant or has just had a baby, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Humans were never meant to do this all alone, we were always meant to be surrounded by villages, people, communities. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. And especially for Black women, it is imperative to get educated: Get educated on your rights, on your body, on the medical system and how it works, know the benefits and risks of everything so that, so that when you’re in that situation, you can do what’s best for yourself and not make a decision that you later feel you regret or that negatively impacts you. “

To find out more about the organization, you can go to their website at ibeblackgirl.com. You can also find out more on Ziara York at her website naturalrhythmsdoula.com, where she conducts a childbirth education and empowerment class to equip women with the information they need to birth with confidence and without fear.