Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week in February 2026, seeking to center our histories and lives in an American narrative that neglected our presence.

In the century since, that recognition has grown into Black History Month. While so much has changed in America, an unacceptable amount has stayed the same.

In our reflection, we must draw the strings from the criminalization of Black midwives in the 1800s to the draconian abortion bans that followed. Black healers who had led the births of generations for centuries were ousted for medical standardization led by white men, who villainized Black midwives, calling the midwives ‘a relic of barbarism.’

They disregarded practices that centered the care of birthing people and their babies — replacing healing with systems steeped in racism that ignore our pain and seek to control our bodies. This wasn’t about medical progress — it was about white supremacy consolidating power over Black birth.

100 years after the establishment of Black History Month, why are Black lives treated like collateral damage in the quest for state control?

We know that the state’s attempts to control our bodies didn’t end with emancipation — they insidiously adapted to our present reality.

Extremist policies like fetal personhood and bounty hunter laws didn’t come from nowhere. They’re built on the same foundation of control that was used to push Black midwives out of our communities, conduct cruel experiments on Black people in white hospitals and clinics without anesthesia, and carry out widespread sterilizations of Black women.

In 2026, our lives in a post-Roe world show the tangible connections between structural racism and theft of bodily autonomy.

From the state’s current-day displacement of Black midwives and community healers to its surveillance and violent punishment of Black families through the family policing system, the prison industrial complex, and ICE raids, the pangs of our cyclical history are undeniable.

We’re not just talking about death in childbirth and postpartum. We’re talking about the right to parent your children safely.

Maternal mortality, family separation, and policing are branches of the same tree.

Why reproductive justice is our path forward

The Black South has always been both a battleground and a blueprint. It’s where control over Black reproduction has been most violently enforced, and where resistance — through midwifery, mutual aid, and community care — has always persisted.

Southern organizers have long known that our liberation is linked to one another. We have long known that reproductive justice is our only path forward.

Reproductive Justice — a framework and a movement built by Black women — demands three things: The right to have children, the right not to have children, and the right to raise families in safe, sustainable communities.

In Houston — the largest city with an abortion ban and the most dangerous for Black people to be pregnant — all three are under attack.

As an abortion-forward organization, Avow Texas knows that fighting for the right to end a pregnancy is inextricably linked to fighting for the right to have a safe pregnancy and raise children in dignity. This is how we build lasting, pro-abortion power — by showing up for the full spectrum of reproductive autonomy.

What can you do?

Support Black birth workers and mutual aid efforts in your city. Engage with local Reproductive Justice campaigns. Help us transform systems so that your city and state become models of reproductive justice, not statistics of harm.

If you’re in Houston, we hope you’ll take action by joining us on February 26 for our “Before the Crisis” panel.