SACKRED Birth

In SACKRED Birth Karen Antoinette Scott situates the contemporary provision and evaluation of obstetric care in a broader historical context to illuminate a culture of neutral apathy and detached concern towards the lives of Black women and men, dating back to antebellum era practices of anti-Black racism and anti-Black misogyny. Using community-based focus groups and consensus dialogue, Scott challenges conventional obstetric quality theories and measures and establishes new quality norms and methodologies to facilitate understanding, investigating, and interpreting clinical practice, decision-making, and care delivery during childbirth hospitalization that affirms the innate worth and power, not pathology, of Black reproducing bodies, Black births, and Black lives.