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Advancing the rights of mother-baby dyads in pregnancy, birth, and beyond.

The pro bono legal practice of civil rights attorney Jacqueline Kaye Hammack focuses on Birth Justice to advance the civil and human rights of mother-baby dyads in pregnancy, birth, and the fourth-trimester postpartum. Through creative advocacy, strategic organizing, and innovative outreach initiatives, Jacqui aspires to increase access to respectful, evidence-based maternity care with the broader goal of improving maternal and infant health outcomes for all families in the Gulf South region of the United States.

Jacqui is sensitive to the fact that identification with marginalized groups can profoundly influence the ways that individuals interact with health care systems. She understands that structural inequities affect access to reproductive justice and contribute to disparate health outcomes for marginalized communities. She recognizes that social determinants of health influence the ways that families subjectively experience pregnancy, birth, and the fourth-trimester. Jacqui rejects neo-liberal ideals of individualism, focusing instead on community-based perspectives and lived experiences of interdependence. She provides culturally competent advocacy to communities of color, immigrants, and lgbtq folks.

Jacqui’s Birth Justice work is solidly grounded in an intersectional, human rights and reproductive justice framework. She is working in service of a world where every pregnancy is intentional, childbearing individuals have full and free bodily autonomy during pregnancy and childbirth, every mother receives the unconditional support of her community if she chooses to breastfeed, the work of mothering is recognized and valued as an inherent condition of human interdependence, and every family has the capacity to rear children in safe and healthy environments.