ABSTRACT
On April 17, 2020, as New Yorkers sheltered in place to slow the spread of a novel coronavirus (COVID-19), Amber Rose Isaacs, a twenty-six-year old Black Puerto Rican woman in her third trimester tweeted her concerns about the “incompetent doctors” who oversaw her prenatal care at the Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx. The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the birthing environments of Black women. The first six months of the pandemic were met with a plethora of shifts in social policies directly related to pregnancy and childbirth. Social support, including doulas, is a demonstrated significant factor in supporting positive health outcomes for pregnant people, and early pandemic policies placed specific limitations on doula support. Many Black pregnant people approach their prenatal care and birth from a location of fear due to the historical legacies of hospital birth in the Black community and the current realities of Black maternal mortality coupled with lived experiences of poor care and lack of respect in biomedicine.
