Jodie Turner-Smith chose to give birth at home because of 'systemic racism'
Jodie Turner-Smith has opened up about what it was like being pregnant during a pandemic and her reasons for giving birth to her and her husband Joshua Jackson’s daughter at home.
In a new essay for British Vogue, the Queen & Slim star, who gave birth in April, wrote that: “Every stage of my pregnancy brought its own challenges and lessons.”
However, even before the coronavirus pandemic became a factor, the couple had decided on a home birth due to concerns “about negative birth outcomes for black women in America”.
“We had already decided on a home birth, because of concerns about negative birth outcomes for black women in America - according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the risk of pregnancy-related deaths is more than three times greater for black women than for white women, pointing, it seems to me, to systemic racism," she said, according to an excerpt from the essay shared by People.
According to the CDC, which notes that most pregnancy-related deaths are preventable, “black, American Indian, and Alaska native (AI/AN) women are two to three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women.”
The health agency also states that this disparity increases with age.
The 33-year-old’s decision to give birth at home was further cemented when the pandemic hit and hospitals began implementing restrictions on the number of people allowed in delivery rooms.
“We never imagined that in the coming weeks, hospitals around the country would begin restricting who could be present in the birthing rooms, forcing mothers to deliver without the support person or people of their choice," Turner-Smith wrote. "Delivering at home ensured that I had what every single woman deserves to have: full agency in determining my birth support."
A post shared by Jodie Turner-Smith (@jodiesmith) on Aug 12, 2020 at 12:39pm PDT
According to Turner-Smith, when it was time to give birth to the couple’s first child together, she spent nearly four days in labour, with Jackson by her side the entire time.
“Early in the morning on my third day of labour, my husband and I shared a quiet moment,” she recalled. “I was fatigued and beginning to lose my resolve. Josh ran me a bath, and as I lay in it contracting, I talked to my body and I talked to my daughter. In that moment, he snapped a picture of me.
“An honest moment of family and togetherness - a husband supporting a wife, our baby still inside me, the sacred process of creating a family.”
Praising her husband’s unwavering support, the actress wrote that “both of us had watched our own mothers struggle to raise children without such support” and that they were both “determined to create something for ourselves.”
“He kept saying to me: 'There's no part of this that I'm going to miss,’" she said.
In May, a month after the couple confirmed the birth of their daughter to People, Jackson shared a Mother’s Day tribute to Turner-Smith on Instagram, where he thanked her for “the the passion with which you threw yourself into nurturing and protecting our child when she was in your womb” and “the dedication and will you showed bringing her into the world.”
“I have never witnessed a more powerful being than you through those moments,” he wrote.
A post shared by Joshua Jackson (@vancityjax) on May 10, 2020 at 10:41am PDT
In her essay, Turner-Smith also reflected on the circumstances surrounding her daughter’s birth, and how she will describe the tumultuous year to her when she’s grown.
"Sometimes I wonder how I will explain to my daughter what it meant to be born in the year 2020. The historic events, the social unrest, and me - a new mother just trying to do her best," she said. "I think I will tell her that it was as if the world had paused for her to be born. And that, hopefully it never quite returned to the way it was before."
