AMEJA co-founder and board member Mona Iskander and AMEJA member Yasmeen Qureshi are part of a team that won the 84th Annual Peabody Award for Public Service for their short documentary, The Post Roe Baby Boom: Inside Mississippi's Maternal Health Crisis. 

Upon their return from the ceremony in Los Angeles, they shared their insights about tackling this underreported issue and amplifying the voices of women in the Mississippi Delta.

What did you learn and what surprised you while working on this documentary?

Yasmeen: Through our reporting we understood what it means to be pregnant in rural Mississippi, which has one of the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality and where access to quality healthcare is a challenge. We also learned that Black women in Mississippi are four times more likely to die from pregnancy complications than white women, and that 80% of maternal deaths in Mississippi are preventable. Deep anxiety was present in almost all of the pregnant women who we spoke with on the ground, and it seemed that everyone knew someone who’d experienced a serious complication in pregnancy or while giving birth. It was normalized. We also learned that maternal mortality is high in Mississippi because of a confluence of factors that include poverty, lack of access and lack of insurance for a population that suffers from many chronic health conditions. 

Credit: Corentin Soibinet

What were the challenges you faced getting people to discuss such a painful and controversial subject? How did you overcome them?

Mona:  The topic of abortion is a cultural taboo in Mississippi and even mentioning the word in our conversations could sometimes make people feel uncomfortable. We spent weeks working the phones - reaching out to doctors all over Mississippi. Most did not want to go near a camera. We finally made contact with Dr. Lakeisha Richardson, an OBGYN who works in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. She felt passionately about giving a voice to the women she sees every day. She also felt comfortable talking about how the abortion ban had changed her work. After several conversations, she gave us full access to her clinical practice and the hospital. 

Trying to find women who had had an abortion was even more challenging. While we were on our first trip to Mississippi, we received a call from one of our sources who introduced us to Shirley, a woman who had been undergoing cancer treatment when she found out she was pregnant. She had to leave the state to have an abortion. She felt compelled to speak publicly so people around the country could understand how these laws affect women like her. We wanted to make sure that Shirley would be protected if she spoke out.  We agreed not to use her last name or the town where she lives, as her safety was the most important thing to us.

Credit: Corentin Soibinet

What  impact do you hope your documentary has?

Yasmeen: We hope that this documentary helped our audience in the rest of the country understand what it feels like to be a pregnant woman in Mississippi amid strict abortion bans and where lack of access to healthcare and poverty are already major challenges. Our hope was to give women like the ones we spoke with, who are rarely featured in the media, a chance to be heard by lawmakers whose decisions have an impact on their lives. 

Credit: Corentin Soibinet

Are there any plans to follow-up on this issue or any updates to provide on the situation in the Mississippi Delta?

Mona: We are looking into producing a film that follows up on the rapidly changing landscape for abortion access in this country. It will likely take us to other parts of the country with a focus on how people who live in states that have banned abortions are managing their new reality.

Yasmeen: A number of states, including New York, have passed bills known as shield laws, that would legally protect doctors who prescribe and mail abortion pills to women in states where abortion is banned. It’s hard to know the impact of these laws on women in Mississippi, but it’s something we’re hoping to explore. 

Credit: Andrea Kramar

Winning a Peabody Award is a career milestone.  What has it meant to you? 

Mona: I am so honored that we won this prestigious award. The team that made this film is very special; I feel very lucky to have worked with such talented filmmakers and journalists. We dedicate this award to all the people who spoke to us for this film. It reminds us how valuable this work is - to give voice to people who are most directly affected by decisions made at the top.  

Yasmeen: It is a true honor to receive this award among such a talented group of storytellers, and with such a special team. Stories like these don’t often make the front page or get the most views on YouTube, but we believe they are deeply important especially at a time when our country is increasingly polarized on topics like these. We dedicate this award to the women and doctors who spoke with us, as it takes immense bravery to speak publicly about a topic that is so personal. They did so with the best intentions, hoping that by speaking out they could improve the experience for someone else.