Biden’s health chief calls for restoring Roe, endorses doula training in call with Lincoln University

Lincoln University might be getting a new doula training program thanks to a conversation between three students and a member of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet.

Xavier Becerra, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), spoke on Zoom with three Lincoln University student leaders as part of the department’s series on reproductive health care. The event is part of a larger push by the Biden administration to commemorate Monday’s 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark case which established a federal right to abortion until it was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2022.

The meeting, which also involved Lincoln University faculty and HHS staff, was supposed to be in-person but had to be held remotely due to Friday’s snowstorm. They spoke about abortion rights, racial disparities in maternal care, facilitating conversations among young people, and creating a doula training program at the school.

Doulas provide emotional and physical support, as well as guidance and education throughout the pregnancy and birthing process.

Located about an hour outside of Philadelphia in Chester County, the historically Black university has a majority female student body.

The meeting participants all emphasized the role race plays in health care disparities. Black and Indigenous women face a maternal mortality rate about three times that of white women, Becerra said.

“I feel like it boils down to just getting the same treatment when it comes to the hospital,” said Kyia Smith, a junior who serves as president of the Thurgood Marshall Law Society.

Doulas are one way to advocate against racial disparities in the health-care system, said Syreeta Bailey-Wilson, the program coordinator for the university’s women’s center who also works as a doula.

Bailey-Wilson said she has been looking into bringing a doula training program to the university, and Becerra was all for it. He said HHS could potentially provide seed money for the program in conjunction with state funding, and he hopes to be celebrating a new doula center when he visits the university in person.

Becerra praised the role doulas play in preventative care even before the training center was raised. He said that meeting patients where they are, early on, with the help of someone with lived experiences they can relate to, is a part of making health care more equitable.

”The doulas are the first point of entry for a lot of women, especially Black women, when it comes to the health care they’re going to need if they’re going to go through a pregnancy,” he said.

He said the Biden administration took a similar approach after seeing disparities between Black and white adults receiving the first vaccine dose in the spring of 2021 by working with trusted messengers, such as clergy members, teachers, coaches, and barbers. And the strategy worked — by January 2022, 90% of adults received their first dose across various racial and ethnic groups, the secretary said.

And he wants to take a similar approach with maternal health and reproductive rights.

“That’s why this is an important session, because we’re going to need your voice,” he told the students. “Because people will trust you way more than they’ll trust someone from Washington, D.C.”

» READ MORE: As Roe v. Wade is overturned, readers respond

Becerra projected optimism about reproductive rights despite the 2022 Dobbs ruling, which reversed Roe and sent the issue of abortion back to the states. Fourteen states have enacted near-total bans of abortion since the decision.

He said that “when we undo the Dobbs decision and restore rights,” young people will want to expand the rights beyond what Roe v. Wade offered. He spoke about young people’s drive to take action, but did not get into what that would look like under the current political realities of a conservative Supreme Court majority and a Republican House majority.

“There’s no reason to believe that they’re going to be satisfied just getting back to Roe, because especially for students like those that we had on that Zoom, they know that Roe hasn’t always been able to provide the support that people in low-income disadvantaged communities need,” he said in an interview following the event.

Becerra told the students that the Biden administration is working to protect patient-provider privacy, emergency abortions when the child-bearer’s life is in danger, and access to safe contraceptive care. Melissa Herd, the local acting regional director for HHS, said students with access to contraception in college are more likely to graduate and make more money when they graduate.

» READ MORE: Many students applying to colleges are avoiding states that don’t support abortion rights

Participants agreed that even in a state like Pennsylvania where abortions are protected, there is still work to be done to educate people on their rights and the resources available to them.

“I know there are so many women on campus who are experiencing these issues and don’t know what to do, or they kind of feel stuck, especially because things are being overturned,” said MaKenzie Hanks, the junior class president.

Kyia Smith, who is from Texas, said that while students have become more politically aware of reproductive rights, her classmates from states where the issue isn’t as pressing still struggle with how to talk about it.

Drake Smith, a junior who moderated the conversation and sits on Gov. Josh Shapiro’s Advisory Commission on Next Generation Engagement, concluded the discussion by paraphrasing a 1961 commencement address Martin Luther King Jr. delivered at the university.

“I don’t think that we’ll have to apologize for the blatant vitriolic words of the bad people, we’ll have to apologize for the appalling silence of the good people,” Smith said, borrowing phrases from King’s speech.

“Everyone on this call is a good person. I’m glad that we’re not silent on this issue,” he added.