This Black, genderqueer birth worker is preparing care providers for every family story

king yaa (they/them), an intersectional feminist, educator, and birth worker, draws on their own challenging experiences within the medical system to champion healthcare equity for queer, trans, and non-binary people. Motivated to act, king rejects the lowercase convention in spelling their name as a statement against the status quo.

In the face of surging anti-LGBTQ legislation, the work of queer birth workers like king is more crucial than ever. The Trans Legislation Tracker is currently following 485 active bills seeking to block trans people from accessing healthcare, education, and other basic needs.

king offers a lifeline of support and understanding, creating safe spaces where queer, trans, and non-binary people can access the care they need, free from the discrimination and bias often found within traditional healthcare settings.

Black communities face additional pressures in seeking and receiving adequate care. Maternal mortality continues to rise in the U.S., but Black birthing people specifically are four times likely than their white counterparts to die due to pregnancy related complications. Like anti-trans legislation has risen, so has the restrictions on abortion, leaving people of color especially at risk.

king started training as a birth worker in 2018 after navigating the healthcare system as Black, genderqueer person of transmasculine experience who has given birth three times and being dissuaded by the “countless f*ckery” they were met with, including awkward questions, inadequate sexual health recommendations and uncomfortable looks in waiting rooms. Their final straw came when a gynecologist accidentally put a speculum into king’s anus because “they were so uncomfortable being with me and were busy asking inappropriate questions,” they explained.

“I had a whole bunch of really, really horrible experiences, and I knew that I wasn’t the only one,” they said, citing that other genderqueer individuals they discussed this with also had bad experiences or were completely avoiding reproductive care to avoid running into these issues. A 2021 study by Center for American Progress found that about half of transgender people and 68% of trans people of color experienced mistreatment by their medical providers.

king says that even when medical clinics advertise as inclusive, they often lack in considering the other identities of patients.

“All of these clinics, all these spaces that say that they’re LGBTQ+ friendly. I’m not sure what that means,” they said, explaining that that usually means they have experience working with white lesbians and might not have considered other identity markers.

Beyond cisgender care

Reproductive care is often synonymous with women’s health, centering cisgender women, but doing so excludes transgender and gender diverse people who have similar but unique needs. king crafted queer reproductive justice building upon SisterSong’s framework for reproductive justice to encompass people with multiple marginalized identities.

LGBTQ+ birthers face poorer pregnancy success rates compared to their heterosexual counterparts, with lesbian and bisexual women experiencing increased complications, including preterm birth, according to a 2022 study. A national poll by AAMC Center for Health Justice found that LGBTQ+ birthing people reported a lower quality of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum care, which was worse for those with lower incomes.

This stark healthcare disparity highlights the urgent need for a more inclusive, intersectional approach to reproductive care – an approach embodied by queer reproductive justice.

According to king, queer reproductive justice is defined as the human’s right to have their full spectrum of identities and full spectrum of experiences (including full spectrum of barriers) to be recognized, included and affirmed to ensure that nobody is left behind. It requires an intentional awareness of intersectionality in addition to one’s positionality when engaging with others. It is the proactive center of bodily autonomy, community and global liberation.

“It’s a cross justice movement bringing everything together,” they said, including healing justice, racial justice, sex workers’ rights, and much more, which they say continues to evolve through their teaching. “Every single time that I’m in a space we expand on it.”

The framework of queer reproductive justice is a framework and accessibility tool used in king’s “birthing beyond the binary,” a 12-week course aimed at creating decolonized, intersectional, and liberatory reproductive spaces for queer, trans and gender non-binary individuals.

The work includes live courses, self-paced modules, assignments, and journaling prompts which causes participants to learn, unlearn and move away from saviorism with some telling king they’ve been transformed through the self-reflection.

“And because there’s the invitation for everybody to look internally to think about what are the biases that they’ve have, you know, what are the things that they’ve been carrying? I don’t think that we can do any of this work without looking at ourselves first,” they said.

They stress the importance of tuning into self while navigating the course, saying that they often pause and tell students to drop into their body and ask how it feels.

“And that’s not something that a lot of people have learned how to do in any learning spaces. And I’m like, this is not headspace work. Decolonizing all the shit does not happen here,” they said, pointing to their head. “To imagine and create the world that we deserve, we need to be led by heart.”

This isn’t a class just for birth workers or those working in medical settings, as the spectrum of gender, sex, race, disability, and more impacts us all in some way.

“Anybody who just wants to recognize that they have blank spots here, and they want to think about how it is that they can just rethink their contribution to this planet,” said king.