Recently, I came upon a 2021 thread on Twitter where Efe Osaren, an amazing birth worker
from NYC, told Serena Williams’ husband to donate money to birth workers directly when he
wanted to do something to make birth safer for people facing racism during pregnancy. Today, Ms. Williams and her husband are one of the biggest funders for the BirthFund project, which gives money to birth centers and homebirth midwives who tackle inequity.
My claim to fame is that Efe was my doula in 2020, a few days before NYC shut down due to the pandemic, and she helped usher in my 4th child. She was also the reason why I chose a home birth and felt comfortable hiring a home birth midwife. I wanted a home birth because my prior labors included obstetric coercion and because I wanted my non-binary identity respected. It was in every way an improvement on my prior 3 labors.
My non-binary identity was respected by everyone and that made things easier, but my being white was another huge reason I survived and was not reported by my neighbors for having a home birth in Brooklyn, something that often happens to Black parents.
As my new baby grew, I began collecting data for my second book, which is about reproductive journeys of transgender and non-binary people. It became clear that our community faces a lot of transphobia, enbyphobia, and many other oppressions.
I paused work on the book when Roe V. Wade was overturned and things got so much worse
for anyone needing abortion and proper reproductive care, especially for people of color and LGBTQ people without means. I returned to writing about my own story and the story of those I interviewed a full year after this terrible regression in our rights.
A month later, the current genocide in Palestine stopped many of us from being able to focus on anything else. What’s going on in occupied Palestine is an atrocity, sure, but it is a disaster for people who birth and children in particular. It is every bit an issue of reproductive justice, disability justice, and feminist praxis that many trans and enby people find to be important issues.
As a non-binary parent of 4 who stands in solidarity with grieving parents out of Palestine, I am again unable to return to writing my book on trans and non-binary people’s lives. As Americans, we are complicit in one of the worst human events of our time. As trans and non-binary people, we are under attack domestically and worldwide.
This Non-binary Parents Day, I am trying to reconcile this reality and make sense of an uncertain present and future. I care deeply about my family’s safety and the safety of others, because we all deserve to live in our truth and see our children grow up.
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