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AMERICANALMANAC (Ken Jacobs) - Tatyana Ali channels traumatic birth into push for Black and Indigenous maternal care Sun Sep 13 22:58:23 2026

Actress Tatyana Ali, best known as Ashley Banks on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, is using her own harrowing 2016 delivery-room experience to press for better maternity outcomes for Black and Indigenous mothers, a cause backed by sobering federal data on maternal deaths and vanishing hospital wards. Ali, now 47, told NPR that the birth […] The post Tatyana Ali channels traumatic birth into push for Black and Indigenous maternal care appeared first on American Almanac .

Actress Tatyana Ali, best known as Ashley Banks on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, is using her own harrowing 2016 delivery-room experience to press for better maternity outcomes for Black and Indigenous mothers, a cause backed by sobering federal data on maternal deaths and vanishing hospital wards. Ali, now 47, told NPR that the birth of her first son, Aszi, in 2016 turned from joyful anticipation into what she calls "obstetric violence." Doctors performed the Zavanelli maneuver, a rare, last-resort procedure in which the baby is pushed back into the birth canal, before rushing her into an emergency cesarean section. Ali says she was physically restrained by about four people, convulsed on the delivery table, and watched the room fill with screaming medical staff. Aszi spent several days in the neonatal intensive care unit. The hospital's head urologist later told Ali her infant had been in shock from the traumatic birth. Ali described the terror in plain terms. "It went from a small group of people in the room to many people in the room screaming, yelling at me.... Faces, screaming, terror, panic. I needed somebody to help me." She said it took time to understand what had happened. Only after hearing similar stories from other women of color did she conclude her experience was not an isolated failure but part of a broader pattern. She now travels the country speaking at conferences and events, and she founded Baby Yams, a business that sells heritage baby quilts made from ankara and batik fabrics. A portion of every sale goes to the Birth Future Foundation, which funds grants for midwives, doulas, and student birth workers serving Black and Indigenous communities. 649 maternal deaths in a single year, and the gap keeps widening The numbers behind Ali's advocacy are not in dispute. Federal data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 649 women in the United States died of maternal causes in 2024 alone. Black mothers were more than three times as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes as white women. And the infrastructure meant to catch those mothers is shrinking: a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that more than 500 hospitals closed their maternity wards between 2010 and 2022. More than half of all U.S. counties now lack hospital-based labor and delivery services, according to the March of Dimes. In the South, the picture is worse. Nearly 40 percent of Southern counties qualify as what the organization calls "maternity care deserts", areas with no hospital labor-and-delivery unit at all. KFF Health News data show that Black and Indigenous women in the South are disproportionately likely to live in those underserved areas, and people of color are also more likely to be uninsured. Those are the kinds of structural facts that should concern anyone who believes government health policy ought to deliver results, not just absorb funding. When hospitals close maternity wards and states maintain regulations that restrict who can deliver babies, the people left holding the consequences are mothers in rural and low-income communities, not the bureaucrats writing the rules. A Washington hospital already cutting postpartum beds Dr. Tamika Auguste, chair of women's and infants' services at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C., told NPR that the racial disparity in maternal outcomes has forced her institution to change how it tracks results. The hospital employs about a dozen midwives and now breaks down outcome data by race and demographics to identify gaps. "I can't tell you how many Black women have said to me: 'Hey Doc, don't let me die.'" Auguste said her hospital recently closed one of its two postpartum units, citing financial pressure. That decision at a major urban medical center underscores the scale of the problem. If a well-resourced D.C. hospital is cutting postpartum capacity, the outlook for smaller facilities in the rural South is grim. Auguste argued that the solution requires collaboration across disciplines. "Physician, midwife, doula, nurse, anesthesiologist, working together as a team. That is critical." Midwife licensing barriers leave rural families with fewer options One concrete result of Ali's advocacy is the story of Nadia Gramby, a 41-year-old midwife in Alabama. Gramby received a Birth Future Foundation scholarship, funded by Baby Yams proceeds, that allowed her to complete the licensing requirements to advance from doula to midwife. She now serves families across Alabama, many of them in areas the March of Dimes classifies as maternity care deserts. Gramby described her work in personal terms. "It is an amazing joy to see families who feel safe and know that they're seen, and they made decisions to make sure that their children are born in safe environments, where they feel comfortable, and they feel cared for and they have been educated and they are empowered." The March of Dimes, in a report released this year, called midwives a critical part of the answer to the access crisis. The organization is pushing for state-level policy changes: removing requirements that midwives practice under physician supervision, and raising Medicaid and private-insurance reimbursement rates so midwifery practices can stay financially viable. Some states still maintain laws that make it harder for midwives to practice, though the NPR report did not name specific states. For conservatives who favor deregulation and expanding patient choice, the midwifery question is straightforward. When state licensing boards and supervision mandates prevent qualified practitioners from serving communities that have no other option, the regulation is not protecting patients, it is protecting incumbents. Mothers in rural Alabama should not have to drive hours to deliver a baby because a state capital decided midwives need a physician looking over their shoulder. Ali's second birth offered a different model After the trauma of Aszi's delivery, Ali and her husband, Vaughn Rasberry, sought a different path for their second child, Alejandro. They searched for and found a midwife. Ali said the second birth acknowledged her birth plan and her wishes, a stark contrast to the first. Ali framed her advocacy not as a grievance but as a call for practical solutions. "There are solutions. The solutions exist now. There are birth centers, there are midwives educating themselves, doulas going into practice." She is also set to compete on ABC's Dancing with the Stars, with the season premiering on Tuesday, September 15, a platform that will put her advocacy in front of a broad national audience. Ali's broader message was direct. "We deserve to be cared for. We deserve to have choices. We deserve to have control over our own bodies. We are beautiful. We are deserving of loving hands." Open questions the data hasn't answered Several gaps remain in the public record. Ali has not named the hospital where Aszi was born or the doctor who performed the Zavanelli maneuver. It is unclear whether any formal complaint, lawsuit, or investigation was filed. The racial breakdown of the 649 maternal deaths recorded by the CDC in 2024 was not detailed in the available reporting. And the specific states whose licensing laws most restrict midwifery practice were not identified. Those unanswered questions matter. Accountability requires names, not just statistics. If a hospital's delivery-room practices caused the kind of harm Ali describes, the public interest is served by knowing which institution was responsible, and whether it changed anything afterward. When more than 500 hospitals have shut down maternity wards, when state regulations block midwives from filling the gap, and when Black mothers die at three times the rate of white mothers, the system is not failing by accident. It is failing by design, and the people paying the price are the families with the fewest choices. The post Tatyana Ali channels traumatic birth into push for Black and Indigenous maternal care appeared first on American Almanac .