How We Fight Back: Storytelling for Reproductive Justice
By Stacie Selmon McCormick, author of We Are Pregnant with Freedom Black Feminist Storytelling for Reproductive Justice
“Narrative sharing, through performance, was and continues to be a powerful tool for fighting reproductive injustices and the unmothering of Black women.” These are the salient words of Megan N. Foster, a doctoral candidate in Communications at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Recently, I had the chance to talk to Foster about her powerful co-created drama, Fight Like Hell, which was performed on Friday, April 11, 2025. The drama features four formerly incarcerated birthing people, Pamela Winn, Kristie Puckett, Latisha Facyson and Tiawana Brown and explores their experiences with reproductive injustice during their incarceration such as various forms of medical indignity including being shackled while giving birth. Megan N. Foster’s work in amplifying the stories of these individuals demonstrates why storytelling is a critical part of reproductive justice work.
We are currently facing efforts to silence the voices of those seeking any form of racial and gender equity. Conversely, the stories of those who are incarcerated rarely gain recognition in the public sphere. When we consider those situated at the intersections of these marginalized realities, namely Black incarcerated birthing people, it is critical to attend to these stories. They are central to conversations about Black maternal morbidity and mortality as well as Black maternal mental health. Their stories are integral to the fight for reproductive justice.
My book, We are Pregnant with Freedom: Black Storytelling for Reproductive Justice, explores the power of story to advance sexual and reproductive liberation narratives. This is especially crucial for those most marginalized in reproductive discourse - namely those who are incarcerated. Because they are often not considered the “perfect victims” (or don’t align with those for whom the mainstream public will feel empathy), their stories are often removed from public consciousness when in actuality they should be centered. In fact, scholar Dorothy Roberts asserts that “theories of reproductive freedom must start with the lives of the women at the bottom, not at the top” (citation). Fight Like Hell does just that. It is what I term, a Black sexual and reproductive liberation narrative that documents injury and survival, and serves as both a counter to the institutional medical record and a vision for the future rooted in freedom.
To more closely examine the kinds of critical storywork taking place that We are Pregnant with Freedom sheds like on, I spoke to Megan N.Foster and her responses illuminate the many ways storytelling remains critical to the fight for reproductive justice. Our conversation is detailed below:
What inspired this research and your work?
I saw a photo of a Black incarcerated woman, shackled to a hospital, with a look of agony on her face. I realized her hospital gown was covering her large stomach, and that she was in active labor. I could not believe what I was seeing. I tried for over a year to find the photographer who shot the image and the unnamed woman in the photo, but was unsuccessful. She is the one who started this work for me, and she truly symbolized the countless women who experience reproductive injustices while incarcerated, who we will never know. That alone makes this work even more essential, because not everyone get to tell their story, or even makes it out alive to do so.
What research methods and ethical considerations did you employ in producing this work?
As an interdisciplinary scholar, I used tools from Black feminism, decolonial scholarship and performance studies. Fight Like Hell is an embodiment of bell hook's concept of talking back through using marginalized voices to name moments of terror, resistance and community and D. Soyini Madison's concept of performed ethnography. I also used deep listening, combined with Dwight Conquergood's concept of co-performative witnessing, and dialogic performance. I consider a staged performance to be a part of witnessing a political act and the reciprocity of engagement. Narrative sharing, through this performance, was and continues to be a powerful tool for fighting reproductive injustices and the unmothering of Black women. As Conquergood suggests, the best way to understand how people make meaning of their lives and resist oppression is to study how they perform their identities and how those performances push back against structural forms of power.
Given the current climate and substantial issues of reproductive unfreedom, what is the role of artists and cultural workers in bringing to light the issues and advancing conversation? How do you see yourself contributing to these efforts?
Our voices are our power, and we have to use them to protect one another. Every day, we face attacks on our reproductive rights that require collective and community-wide resistance. As a community accountable scholar, artist, AND someone who is navigating these threats in her life, I see myself as a bridge, for bringing folks together to have harsh conversations and to engage with hidden narratives. We can do better if we know better and are accountable for our part in protecting our communities - those we know and those we don't. I strive to create staged performances that are accessible to all, as a reminder that it will take all of us, working hand in hand, to push against systems and structures of power.
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Megan N. Foster uses the power of the stage and storytelling as a way to build collectivity in the fight for reproductive freedom for all. Like Foster, in We are Pregnant with Freedom, I advocate for similar bridge-building across the struggles of those both within the system and outside of it. Indeed, these struggles are intertwined. Carceral logics and inequality (racial, economic, gender, etc.) still shape the way Black reproduction is managed in hospitals and is even greater demonstrated in the care or lack of care for incarcerated Black birthing people. And while this is true, it is important to acknowledge that the harm of these logics are exacerbated in the case of those who are incarcerated where feelings of undeservedness of care and patient blame permeate the space. Carceral healthcare is a site of concentrated injustice that is a microcosm for the medical harms that exist beyond the prison. These harmful logics are not only intertwined but are also instructive for how we might truly achieve reproductive justice.