PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Diona Murray has spent the last four years advocating for equity in birthing experiences like access to reproductive health care and resources for Black women.
“We need to implement things that are going to keep us alive, that show that our life matters and that our baby matters,” she said.
In 2019, Murray started the nonprofit Barren Fruit because of her personal experiences with reproductive health struggles. After talking with other women, she noticed a trend.
“Whether it's loss, having a traumatic experience with giving birth, having difficulty getting pregnant, the whole spectrum of things, the common denominator throughout … from people that I talked is that I was forgotten. I was forced to do something I didn't want to do,” she recalled.
According to the American Medical Association, many Black women don’t have proper access to health insurance or preventive care services, and even those who do are treated poorly.
Black women are three times more likely to have a pregnancy-related death than white women, with more than 80% of those deaths being preventable. In Philadelphia alone, Black women represent 43% of the births, but 73% of the deaths, according to pediatric surgeon Dr. Ala Stanford.
For these reasons, Murray felt as if the subpar treatment of Black women trying to conceive or seek care during pregnancy was at the convenience of the hospital or doctor and not with life being considered.
“And so at what point are the decisions being made or things being implemented solely just for the purpose of supporting us, our womanhood, our motherhood and our babies?” Murray said.
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Murray’s journey was long. She said she went through cycles of depression, not knowing what was wrong with her and not getting answers.
“And so really not knowing what was ahead, what was stopping me from getting pregnant, the looming thought that I might have endometriosis – but the very mere fact that all those years that still went undiagnosed, and how many other people are experiencing that, you know, of the unknown of what's wrong with your bodies, and there's nobody that is willing to like figure it out until you want to try to have a child.”
After a doctor performed the surgeries she needed, Murray was told she had less than a 1% chance of ever conceiving. But that news didn’t deter her. In fact, it inspired her to birth something new.
“And so in the darkest part of my journey, when I didn't think that it was possible after surgery, Barren Fruit was born.”
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“I began to pick myself up. All the lies that I had in my head, I knew that they weren't real. I thought that I was helpless. I thought, you know, ‘What, did God forget about me?’ I thought that I was alone. I thought that nobody understood. And I knew that all those things were lies. And so the more that I studied God's word, and the more that I realized what was really happening was that I was chosen for this, that God was trying to do something through me, that he was trying to birth something through me.”
And with this changed mindset, she found out on her birthday that, despite what the doctor told her, she was pregnant. Murray called this news the “greatest gift ever.”
Now, she’s helping others through connection, community and amplifying the voices of those experiencing similar struggles.
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“I firmly believe that sometimes there's a purpose planted in us. And, you know, sometimes it needs to sit a while and be cultivated. And sometimes we need to get out there and do it. Someone is waiting, someone needs your organization, someone needs your ministry, someone needs this fire that you have inside of you, and they're waiting for you to act.”
Barren Fruit will be holding their annual 3K Warrior Walk on April 22 to kick off their Infertility Empowerment Week/Conference, which follows Black Maternal Health Week, a week of action meant to bring attention to the disparities in Black birthing experiences.
Registration is open on their website.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly named the owner of Barren Fruit as Diona Murphy.