Welcome to Black Feminist Rants where we center conversations on Reproductive Justice and activism. I'm your host LaKia Williams and let's begin. Welcome back to another episode of Black Feminist Rants. Thank y'all so much for tuning in again. This week I have a really great episode with a very special guest speaker, Dr. Jamilla Perritt. Dr. Perritt is an abortion provider and OBGYN and the president and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health, and she's also a Reproductive Justice advocate. So in this episode, Dr. Perritt discusses the impact that abortion bans have on her patients. And while this episode was recorded back in December, I think this conversation is so timely right now as we await the SCOTUS decision that will impact abortion access in this country. So with that being said, let's jump right into the interview. So Hello, Dr. Perritt, thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Black Feminist Rants. To start us off, can you introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, your title, and the care that you provide as a physician and anything else you would like to share?
Absolutely. Thank you so much for inviting me. It really is my pleasure to be here. As you mentioned, hi, my name is Dr. Jamilla Perritt. And you know, the question about- and I use she/her pronouns. And the question about my work and, and my title is always a tricky one, right? It's often the first question that people ask me, but it's probably the most challenging to answer because I don't know how to answer it in like a really quick or succinct way. And I think that that's probably because there is no simple or easy answer. I think, like much- like many people, most people I'd say, and like most Black women in particular, I do a lot of work in lots of ways and in lots of spaces. I am a Board Certified Obstetrician and Gynecologist and I'm an abortion provider in the city I grew up in, in Washington DC. I'm also an advocate and an activist in the reproductive health rights and justice spaces and the president and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health. Physicians for Reproductive Health, we are a network of doctors working really to mobilize the medical community, to educate and organize providers, and use medicine and science to shape policy and practice and legislation, really working to advance access to reproductive health care for the communities we care for. Because we know that policy and legislation often impact and sometimes dictate the care we provide. So that's, I think, the quickest summary of the way that I often describe my work, although I don't know that it's quick at all.
Yes, thank you for sharing that. You said many Black women do hold lots of different projects. And I see you're wearing lots of different hats. But all the work you're doing is so important. So thank you for all the work that you do for communities. So I just really want to talk to you about your experience as a healthcare provider and an abortion provider in a country where abortion care is always under threat. So my first question was, as an abortion provider, what effect do abortion bans anywhere in the country have on patients everywhere in the country?
I think the thing that's really tricky about abortion care, in general, and the way that we think about it and talk about it is because of the highly stigmatized way that abortion is discussed, it's provided in this country, it's often treated as separate and other, right. And so when we think about the impact of abortion bans in particular, I think a lot of folks think that it's not going to affect them, that it does not have any effect on most people. And that is absolutely false. You know, we know that bans on abortion care disproportionately impact communities that are already marginalized from care. So we're talking about Black, indigenous, and other communities of color. We're talking about those living on low incomes. We're talking about immigrants. We're talking about young people, LGBTQ folks. And so those are folks that are going to be disproportionately impacted by abortion care. But the truth is abortion care and the need to access abortion care impacts everybody, regardless of race or economic status or immigration status. And so bans are going to impact everybody as well. If we just simply look to what is happening in Texas, not even what's happened most recently, but over the last decade, things that are happening in Texas and Mississippi and Alabama and other places in the Midwest, we can see very, very clearly in those states where abortion bans have been passed. It has direct impact on reproductive health care more broadly. So there really is a through line in banning access to care that is essential that reinforces an individual's agency and autonomy impacts our health and wellbeing as an entire community more broadly.
Thank you. I love how you brought up that, you know, banning access to abortion care. It, it impacts essential, just our overall healthcare, and it's a public health issue as well.
It does. And I think that, you know, people don't really understand that abortion, the decision to access abortion care, the need to have an abortion doesn't occur in a vacuum. Right? It occurs in the context of the life that you're living. And so for folks who need access to abortion care, there are many other competing priorities. And the people that I take care of, my patients talk about this every time they come in, and the reasons for needing an abortion are often impacted by the systems and the context and the communities in which we live. So it's directly related to lack of pay equity. It's directly related to increased risk of morbidity and mortality for Black women and birthing people. It's directly related to the lack of infrastructure around social support services. It's directly related to the history of racism and white supremacy embedded in our medical systems and in every part of our lives. All of those things are connected to abortion care and the need to access abortion.
Yes, thank you so much. My next question, which is similar to what you were just speaking on, is although abortion should be apolitical because it- because it is simply healthcare, which we all are entitled to based on our human rights. Can you speak to how your work as an abortion provider is tied to your commitment to justice?
I love the beginning of the question, because the, the "although abortion should be apolitical," I naively when I began my medical training, I thought that it would be. I knew going into medical school that I wanted to be an OBGYN. And I assumed that I would be able to provide the full scope of Obstetrics and gynecological care, which includes abortion care. I had no idea the degree of politic- politicization that of this one specific service would have in the care that I provided. The other thing that I love, it's embedded in your question is the mention of human rights as a frame for which we understand health care. I'm disappointed in- to say that I think I've probably completed my entire training in medicine, and never heard or rarely heard utterance of the phrase human rights. And so if we think about what it means to provide healthcare more broadly, and reproductive health care, specifically, from a human rights framework grounded in the ideology about human rights, and we know that several things are true, right? One, human rights are indivisible. They're entitled, everyone is entitled to them, no matter where you live, what you look like your economic status, your immigration status, right. They're universal, they're individual- indivisible. And so thinking about what that means for healthcare, for me, is a really natural connection to the Reproductive Justice framework. And one of the deep, deep values that I hold as an abortion care provider, right. Understanding that grounding our work in human rights, and social justice, and ultimately, Reproductive Justice is what drives me in thinking about why it's critical that I provide this care in my own community.
Definitely, a lot of times we see people try to separate you know, social justice and science and medicine, but you know, they're all connected to all part of it. We are, we are entitled to health care. So it can't be in a vacuum.
For sure. And you know, and I think that most providers of color and Black providers in particular, we came to this work deeply grounded in our desire for health and healing of our communities. Many of us came to medicine seeing it as a tool of liberation. And so there is no separation, right, of social justice, of economic justice, of gender, justice, of racial justice, and what brought us to the work. The challenge, of course, is that we still are trained within a system that is, is, rests on the legacies of genocide, of colonization, of slave- of enslavement of black people in this country. And so how do we take those principles that brought us to the work and remember them as we're trying to survive these systems? Or in the case of what we're seeing in a lot of folks that are coming through medical training now, how do we upend this system and create a new one that we believe will serve our communities?
Definitely, I was a pre-med and undergrad and I didn't want to be a gynecologist until I read Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts. And that just changed everything for me. So definitely came from a place that you're speaking,
Yes, so many amazing people that are writing about this care. You know, Dorothy Roberts, of course, amazingly, Harriet Washington writes, in Medical Apartheid, about this history, this legacy upon which medicine rests. There are so many amazing folks that are doing this work.
Thank you. Um, I know we're running out of time. So I have one more question. So in the Planned Parenthood V. Casey case, the Supreme Court affirmed that abortion is a constitutional right until a fetus is viable, and many people have critiqued the concept of fetus viability as something not based in science. In your professional opinion, is there any scientific or medical reason why abortion should be should not be performed after 20 to 24 weeks?
So what I'd love to start by saying is that no matter what brings someone to needing access to abortion care, no matter the time in their pregnancy, they should be able to access compassionate and safe health care. What we do know is that the gestational age bans on abortion care are not based on science. They're not based on medical evidence, and instead are intended to push care out of reach, period. Impacts of the bans like we see in Texas are devastating. And for politicians that are pushing this agenda, right, at the state and at the federal level, I find it really disingenuous and- to- for them to claim that they care about the health and well being of pregnant people, of birthing people, of our families, of our communities, while working aggressively to rollback essential health care services like abortion care.
Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you. I know we're almost at time, so I don't want to keep going on. But thank you so much. I'm a big fan of yours. Yeah, you Dr. Joia Crear-Perry, Dr. Monica McLemore. Like you're like my three like trilogy of like black women in like the repro health sphere. And I really look up to you all.
Thank you so much. It's been my pleasure to be here. I also deeply admire Dr. McLemore, and Dr. Crear-Perry, and so many amazing folks that are just doing really important work in this space. I'm grateful to have had an opportunity to talk with you and hope we'll be able to do so again in the future.
Yes, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank y'all so much for tuning into this episode. And thank you to Dr. Perritt, just for gracing BFR with your presence and all your knowledge and just like the insider information you have as an abortion provider, and just having very intimate knowledge of what's happening with these abortion bans that are spreading across the country. Thank you so much for giving us that insight. To all the listeners I will leave a link down below for ways that you can support Physicians for Reproductive Health. Also, you know the drill sign up for the BFR newsletter. Sign up to become a member to get member exclusive content, so on and so forth. Just fill out the audience survey. All the things will be in the description box, which I say every episode, so if you haven't done it yet, please do it. And I will talk to y'all on the next episode. Bye.
