On the day Livia Marati was supposed to give birth, Typhoon Mawar moved toward Guam. Anyone more than 36 weeks of pregnancy they were instructed by the governor’s office to go to the only hospital on the island with bed linen and drinking water. Family members had to stay behind.
Marati, a 35-year-old CHamoru woman, had worst-case scenarios running through her mind: what if a tree was blocking the road to the hospital? Or was there a power outage? “I called my doula on the phone in case I needed to give birth,” she said.
Fortunately, she ended up giving birth at Guam Memorial Hospital a few weeks later, after electricity was mostly restored to the island. But the difficult situation was a reminder of the fragility of emergency services for women in labor without access to a doula. “For the general population here, they don’t have support or an alternative plan in place,” Marati said.
For the last two yearsmedical professionals have been sounding the alarm on what they consider a “maternal care crisis” in Guam. Following the closure of the island’s only freestanding birth center in December 2022, Guam’s maternity support options are the only hospital and the only doula that has helped Marati. However many US states are beginning to reimburse doula care through Medicaid, coverage of which does not extend to U.S. territories like Guam. The island was also left without abortion services since the only doctor who performs abortions retired in July 2018.
A women-led organization CHamoru is trying to fill these gaps in reproductive access. By training CHamoru doulas, the Birthworkers of Color Collective is preparing the island’s women for the increasing frequency of weather disasters like Typhoon Mawar, which struck last spring. About heavily militarizedResource-poor Guam, the collective hopes to equip the community with Indigenous-centered reproductive practices and rapid-response birth support.
“When Americans talk about access and reproductive rights, they’re not thinking about how territories like Guam are doubly, triply impacted by laws and decision-making,” said Stevie Merino, 35, CHamoru, founder of Birthworkers of Color. Collective. “Reproductive justice is not just the birth experience, but also climate injustice, food insecurity, and affordable housing.”
Climate change has exasperated Guam’s reproductive access problems
A 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found that pregnant women were more likely to suffer disproportionately during extreme weather events. On Guam — where maternal and infant mortality rates are higher than the national average and CHamoru babies are five times more likely to die before 1 year of age – a critical care nurse at Guam Memorial Hospital testified at a legislative hearing Last year, another super typhoon could close outdated hospital facilities, leaving pregnant women completely isolated with nowhere to go.
The lack of reproductive access is exacerbated by environmental and cultural issues arising from the region’s history and strategic location. When Guam was under Spanish rule since 1521 to 1898the CHamoru population decreased by 90%. The island was ceded to the USA in 1898 after the Spanish-American War, captured by the Japanese in 1941 and then recaptured by the U.S. in 1944leading to environmental destruction of a third of the island which came under US military control. Guam and the neighboring Marshall Islands have high rates of infertility, miscarriages, and birth complications due to high levels of nuclear waste and radiation from military testing. Since the reform of the only doctor who performs abortions on Guam in 2018, women must now rely on telemedicine sent from Hawaii if they decide to have an abortion.
For over 4,000 yearsCHamoru traditional healers practiced and passed on their knowledge – until they were attacked by the Catholic Church for practicing voodoo. “In Guam, we had Suruhano healers – people who knew how to work with medicinal plants for pregnant women and babies,” Merino said. “After World War II, our island was heavily militarized and healers and midwives were regulated or banned by the military government.”
Merino explained that childbirth has only become a medicalized process in recent decades. “Younger generations are trying to reclaim traditional healing practices, but many practices have been lost because they have not been passed down,” she said. “That’s why our doula training feels especially timely now.”
Recentering Indigenous Practices Through Doula Training
Merino, who lives in Long Beach, California, first came up with the idea of organizing a comprehensive doula training – covering all pregnancy and postpartum outcomes – in Guam shortly before Typhoon Mawar hit last year. .
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
