In honor of Black Maternal Health Week this past April, Reproaction launched a photo campaign as a means to raise awareness for maternal and infant mortality. Don’t worry if you did not get a chance to participate during Black Maternal Health Week, because we decided to make this an ongoing aspect of our maternal and infant mortality work. You can help us raise awareness and increase the urgency on these interrelated issues by submitting a photo and a brief statement here.

As a reproductive justice organization, Reproaction centers women of color in our work to ensure that it is intersectional. For maternal and infant mortality, this looks like paying special attention to racial health disparities. Focusing on racial health disparities reveals that Black women are, on average, three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women. It also reveals that Black babies are twice as likely to die in their first year of life than white babies. This would be alarming in any country, but it is especially alarming here in the U.S. because the U.S. promotes itself as the richest nation in the world. This status is even more outrageous when you consider that the U.S. outspends every nation in the world on healthcare, has the worst maternal and infant mortality rates of industrialized nations, and is the only country where maternal and infant mortality have actually gotten worse over the last 10 years. When we consider all of these factors, there is only one thing left to conclude: The time to act is now!

It’s really easy to participate in our photo campaign, and it is activism you can do from anywhere with access to the internet. Just submit a photo and a brief statement (one or two sentences) explaining why addressing maternal and infant mortality is important right here. We will put your submissions into graphic form, get your final approval, and then share it on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Please follow/like us and share our posts with your followers to increases our ability to reach people through this campaign.

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View some examples below and use them as your motivation to participate:

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