See me as someone you love: Confronting the Black maternal health crisis with faith in ourselves

“Notes on faith” is theGrio’s inspirational, interdenominational series featuring Black thought leaders across faiths. “If you look at me and you don’t see your sister or your daughter or your mother or your best, best friend,” said “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” alum Tatyana Ali, “then you don’t get to touch me.” After experiencing what amounted to a nightmare while giving birth to her second son, this statement proclaiming Ali’s criteria for choosing healthcare professionals attuned to Black women’s needs hit to the core as she conversed with various Black women on her show, “Recipe for Change.” That resolve was even more poignant because Ali was responding to a riveting story shared by her tablemate, fellow actress Kyla Pratt. As previously reported by theGrio, Pratt shared a harrowing story about the questionable care she received while daring to advocate for herself during her second pregnancy in 2013. “Luckily, standing up for myself at that moment, my daughter is here now,” Pratt added, explaining that a nurse had initially dismissed her insistence that she was in active labor. “[The nurse] went to get my doctor; my doctor said, ‘You’re six centimeters dilated, and we have to do an emergency C-section. But because...