My daughter got here into this world 4 months too quickly.
For 4 months, we lived beneath the blinking lights and beeping machines of the neonatal intensive care unit at among the finest kids’s hospitals in america. Each single day, I watched her chest rise and fall with fierce dedication—a rhythm extra sacred than any tune I’d ever heard. And each single day as I used to be therapeutic, physique torn and spirit shaken, I stored watch. Questioning if she would survive the evening.
My then-husband and I each labored full-time. We had what folks name “good jobs.” We had personal insurance coverage. We had achieved issues the so-called “proper” means. And nonetheless, my daughter’s and my hospital payments climbed towards lots of of 1000’s of {dollars}.
Medicaid saved us.
It stepped in the place our personal insurance coverage fell quick. It coated the care that helped my daughter dwell. It gave me area to recuperate from the issues of her start. And since I certified for Medicaid, I additionally certified for WIC, which ensured there was meals within the fridge and system within the cupboard once I couldn’t nurse. With out these applications, I might nonetheless be in debt right this moment, nearly twenty years later. I might need misplaced our dwelling. I actually don’t know the way I might’ve made it again to myself.
Public help didn’t simply assist us survive; it helped us recuperate and thrive. It gave us a second probability to dwell with dignity.
So once I hear politicians speak about “lazy welfare mothers” or “irresponsible spending,” I consider moms like me. I consider infants like mine. And I do know they’re flat out mendacity.
The “Huge Stunning Invoice,” handed July 3, 2025, is all the things however stunning. It’s treacherous. It slices via Medicaid and shreds the very helps that maintain households like mine afloat. It does this all whereas handing over $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to billionaires and firms.
For Black ladies, particularly, this invoice is not only unhealthy coverage; it’s a blueprint for abandonment and deep hurt. The invoice consists of the most important Medicaid cuts in U.S. historical past. That’s not simply numbers on a web page; that’s a dying sentence for a few of us.
Greater than 65% of Black births are coated by Medicaid. And nonetheless, Black ladies are thrice extra more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white ladies. When a mom hemorrhages and dies as a result of she couldn’t afford prenatal care, the state will name it a tragedy. When a child is born too early as a result of her mom had to decide on between groceries and fuel to get to the clinic, it is going to be referred to as unlucky. However we all know higher.
None of what’s coming shall be mere misfortune. It will likely be the results of intentional coverage. It will likely be neglect baked into legislation.
The Huge Stunning Invoice additionally targets Deliberate Parenthood, stripping Medicaid funding from clinics that supply abortion providers, even when the cash is used for preventive care. The invoice doesn’t simply go after abortion—it threatens entry to most cancers screenings, STI testing, prenatal visits, and contraception, particularly for low-income sufferers who depend on these clinics as their solely supply of care.
Over 2.4 million folks, lots of them Black and Brown ladies, rely closely on these amenities for reproductive care. And when these clinics shut, Black ladies shall be hit hardest. We already die from cervical most cancers at charges 65% greater than white ladies. Denying entry to reproductive care isn’t simply merciless; for Black ladies, it’s a calculated choice — a quiet, systemic verdict on who’s allowed to heal and who’s left to die.
One other means this atrocious invoice harms Black ladies is in the way it expands work necessities for SNAP, demanding that recipients log 80 hours per 30 days of labor, volunteering, or coaching, whilst prices rise and wages stagnate. However let’s be clear: Black ladies are already among the many most energetic labor teams on this nation. Many people are working a number of jobs whereas caring for elders and kids. We’re doing probably the most with the least, and nonetheless, we’re requested to show our price, over and over.
We all know this invoice isn’t about encouraging work. It’s about punishing poverty. It’s about turning starvation right into a check and forms right into a weapon. And we additionally know who shall be harm most. Almost 1 in 4 Black kids depend on SNAP to eat.
These hungry kids will study early that the leaders of this nation see their wants as a burden. Hungry moms will skip meals so their kids don’t need to. And too many hardworking households will internalize their struggles, believing their starvation is a private failure, fairly than the results of a authorities that has turned its again on their most simple wants. SNAP doesn’t simply fill plates. It protects dignity. And once you take it away, you don’t simply trigger starvation—you trigger hurt that may echo for generations.
Housing vouchers and baby care subsidies are additionally deeply slashed by the “Huge Stunning Invoice,” stripping away helps that Black ladies depend on to remain housed and maintain down jobs. With out these essential applications, extra of us shall be pushed into homelessness, and extra of our kids shall be left with out care—a actuality underscored by reporting that the proposal would lower roughly 43% of federal housing help, affecting as much as 3.8 million folks.
When these foundations crumble, households aren’t simply pressured; they’re left susceptible to displacement and systemic breakdown. And when housing turns into unstable or a dad or mum misses a medical appointment as a result of she will’t get off work, the federal government doesn’t ship assist. It sends Little one Protecting Providers to surveil and separate households.
Poverty turns into neglect, mother and father grow to be suspects, and kids grow to be case numbers. This invoice will trigger extra household separations, not as a result of Black moms are unfit, however as a result of we’re under-resourced.
Because the Little one Welfare Info Gateway explains, poverty-related hardships like housing instability and lack of childcare usually result in baby welfare involvement, even when no hurt has occurred. We should assume deeply about what number of extra Black households shall be torn aside by the kid welfare system, on condition that 53% of Black kids will face a CPS investigation earlier than the age of eighteen—a stark reflection of how racism and racial capitalism, not parental unfitness, too usually drive the surveillance and separation of our communities.
However right here’s what they don’t depend on: Us.
Black ladies have at all times turned shortage into sanctuary. We’ve at all times constructed networks of care from the crumbs we have been handed. By way of mutual support, we feed one another, home one another, and heal one another. We present up when programs don’t—as a result of nobody is aware of higher than Black ladies that we will’t depend on programs to save lots of us. These efforts usually are not, and have by no means been, simply acts of kindness. They’re acts of resistance, of technique, and of survival.
It’s additionally vital to notice, although, that Black ladies deserve greater than survival. We deserve pleasure, relaxation, group, and security. Not divestment, surveillance, and punishment. And till this nation learns easy methods to give us these issues, we’ll proceed constructing them with our personal arms, in our personal names, for our personal folks.
The “Huge Stunning Invoice” is just not stunning—it’s brutal. A love letter to the rich, and a warning to the remainder of us. However we aren’t warnings. And because the nice poet and thinker Audre Lorde reminds us: we aren’t solely casualties—we’re additionally warriors. We’re moms, sisters, healers, and builders. We’re those who make this nation attainable, even because it tries to erase us. So we will’t be silent on this second. We should arrange, protest, shield, and pour into one another. As a result of solidarity will carry us ahead.
And we’ll carry one another. Time and again.
Josie Pickens is an educator, author, cultural critic, and abolitionist strategist and organizer. She is the director of upEND Motion, a nationwide motion devoted to abolishing the household policing system.
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