FIX EXCLUSIVES
Key Takeaways
- UC Berkeley has launched BElovedBIRTH Black Centering, a targeted maternal health program providing prenatal and postpartum care exclusively for Black birthing individuals with an all-Black staff, aimed at addressing birth equity and systemic racism in healthcare.
- The program offers comprehensive support including midwifery care, doula services, childbirth education, and additional resources like childcare and housing assistance to ensure healthy pregnancies and births for Black individuals.
- While the initiative focuses on improving maternal and infant health outcomes, it has faced criticism for its use of the term 'birthing people' and its potential to promote a reproductive justice agenda, sparking concerns about the implications of such a narrative within the Black community.
- Research indicates positive outcomes from the program, showing that infants born to participants have lower rates of premature birth and higher birth weights compared to the broader Alameda County population.
Critic raises concerns about use of term ‘birthing people‘
The University of California Berkeley supports a program called BElovedBIRTH Black Centering, which provides prenatal and postpartum care exclusively for black “birthing people” with an all-black staff.
Berkeley’s Wallace Center for Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health has partnered with Alameda Health System’s Highland Hospital to provide research support for the BElovedBirth program, according to UC Berkeley Public Health.
“One of our driving values at the Wallace Center is birth equity, and that’s exactly what Beloved provides,” Wallace Center director Lindsay Parham said.
She also told The Daily Californian that the school is “helping give them an arsenal of information to go out and increase the reach of the program.”
Alameda Health System states on its website that the group envisions a world where “Black birthing people have all the support, loving care, and resources needed to have happy, healthy, and safe pregnancies, births, and postpartum recoveries; free from obstetric racism.”
It also states that black “birthing people” disproportionately experience trauma and “complications in pregnancy and birth” that are “caused by racism.”
The program provides midwifery care, doula support, childbirth education, and community group sessions for expecting mothers. It also offers “wrap-around” support services through the Alameda County Public Health Department, including access to childcare resources, housing assistance, and nutrition support.
Further, “Beloved offers a paradigm shift by empowering Black women, birthing people, midwives, and the broader birth equity community to lead health system innovation and redefine perinatal care for the Black birth justice movement,” according to a research paper published by the Wallace Center.
“The founders of Beloved took an asset‐based approach and partnered with local community organizations and Black entrepreneurs to implement Beloved during the COVID‐19 pandemic,” the paper states.
The Wallace Center has also published data examining the program’s outcomes.
According to a 2024 report, infants born to program participants were less likely to be born prematurely and more likely to have higher birth weight than infants born elsewhere in the Alameda County health system.
Berkeley and Alameda Health System declined to comment when reached by The College Fix over the phone.
However, Douglass Leadership Institute President Bishop Garland Hunt told The Fix that BElovedBirth Black Centering may promote a political agenda.
While the program seems to focus on infant mortality, along with perinatal care, nutritional counseling, and beyond, he is “deeply concerned about the reproductive justice mindset and use of terminology such as birthing people.”
Hunt noted that “These political dynamics usually transition to conversations about abortion—which has caused devastating, irreversible harm to the Black community.”
He told The Fix that these elements are “far more consequential than hiring practices.”
“If the all-Black staff aligns with the reproductive justice narrative, they are much more likely to push this movement on to their all-Black clients—further devaluing the sanctity of human life,” he said.
“Far too many innocent preborn lives have been sacrificed for the sake of reproductive justice,” Hunt said.
A research paper published by Berkeley explicitly states that “Beloved honors the rights of families to decide if, how, where, and with whom to give birth.”
It also states that the program’s childbirth education materials are “rooted in the Reproductive Justice, Birth Justice, Womanist theory, Intersectionality” and “’rest as reparations’ … frameworks.”
In a video posted to BElovedBIRTH Black Centering’s Instagram, a woman said, “I’m a black midwife. Of course I’m pro-choice.”
Another woman said, “I’m a black midwife. Of course I’m going to talk to you about your birth control options with a reproductive justice lens.”
