WATCH: Congresswoman Shontel Brown Discuss Women Issues

Paint The Polls Black Guest Shontel Brown talks about reproductive freedom.

Transcript

00:00So many Black women deal with infant mortality, maternal mortality issues.

00:05Before coming to Congress, I served on Cuyahoga County, and during the times of the pandemic,

00:12we started to recognize the disparities specifically as they impact Black communities,

00:17and that conversation was only elevated by the tragic death of George Floyd.

00:22I bring that up because that was the foundation for me leading legislation

00:26to declare racism as a public health crisis, but the foundation was

00:31tied to infant mortality, the infant mortality crisis that we experience here,

00:35particularly in my district where we have some of the best hospitals, I mean first-class,

00:40world-class hospitals, but we also experience third-world infant mortality rates.

00:44And so these things just did not make sense to me.

00:47So this has been a long-standing personal passion project of mine.

00:51So when we talk about reproductive freedom, when we talk about reproductive justice,

00:55when we talk about women being able to have the right to make their own health care decisions,

01:00I hail from the state where the evangelist of Trump's 2025 project is now the VP pick,

01:07J.D. Vance, right?

01:09And this is a person who believes in having a national abortion ban with no exceptions

01:14for rape or incest.

01:15We are the state where there was a 10-year-old child who was a rape victim who had to flee

01:21the state to get the care that she needed because abortion care is health care.