Clinic Sofia Stands With the BIPOC Community Against Racism
Clinic Sofia OBGYN stands in solidarity with the BIPOC community against systemic racism and oppression experienced every day in America. We owe it to our BIPOC staff, friends, medical colleagues, social media followers, and most importantly, to our BIPOC patients to demand change and accountability. To be silent is to be complicit.
Below is an excerpt from our own Dr. Erin Stevens’ book “Unexpected: A Postpartum Survival Guide” (for context: “phoenix” = postpartum individual): “… our medical community is failing phoenixes. On a broader scale, we know that the United States is the only developed nation with a rising maternal mortality rate and that the incidence of many medical complications is increasing in pregnancy and the postpartum period.
There are a myriad of contributors to this, not all of which have been fully identified and explored. Risks aren’t equal for all populations and can be impacted by unjust elements such as differences in health insurance, decreasing obstetric services in rural areas, and implicit bias. Typical pregnancy and postpartum care is designed for cisgender, heterosexual, white, healthy women with viable, planned pregnancies who live in resource-rich settings.
Phoenixes of color, for instance, are more likely to die than their white counterparts, which is certainly influenced by systemic racial discrimination and stereotyping. Even simple Google image searches for “pregnancy” or “postpartum” produce results overwhelmingly featuring white women cradling their term pregnant bellies or healthy babies.”
Talking about racism can be uncomfortable but is so vitally necessary. Thankfully, there are many resources available to better educate ourselves and our children. Here is a resource guide complied by Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein for anti-racism and for being an educated ally for BIPOC: https://docs.google.com/
At Clinic Sofia, we vow to be better; to do better. Going forward, we will be taking a look at own internal processes and practices to make sure that our actions match our words.
