Breathing through labor pains, she let out a guttural scream. The midwife caught the baby and gasped.
There was a thin, slimy veil covering the baby’s face. The midwife knew a future powerful leader had just been born.
“Caul” is a thin layer of tissue surrounding the fetus in the womb. Drawing from traditional African medicine, many enslaved Southern midwives viewed caul births, when the baby is born with the caul intact, as sacred.
It was believed these babies had immense spiritual powers and would become great leaders within their community.
Unfortunately, anti-Blackness used Western medicine and shame throughout colonization and enslavement to strip the sacred from our ancestors' traditional medicine.
A major example of this now is how inhumane Western medicine treats Black expecting parents during their pregnancy and labor experiences.
According to the CDC, “Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than White women.” They also state that 80% of America’s pregnancy-related deaths are preventable.
This means that for many Black women with pregnancy-related deaths, their cause of death is medical racism. And there’s nothing sacred about that.
What can we do to reclaim our traditional medicinal practices? It’s our right to keep birthing experiences sacred.
We’re literally birthing the next generation of freedom fighters.