Abide Women’s Health Services (Abide), is a maternal justice organization that exists to improve birth outcomes in communities with the lowest quality of care by offering healthcare and complementary services that are easily accessible, holistic, evidence-based, and free from judgment. Learning of the disproportionate death rates among Black women in childbirth, and the staggering infant mortality statistics amongst Black babies is what propelled Abide’s Founder & Executive Director, Cessilye R. Smith to pursue justice in a way that centered the lived experiences of Black women and their families. Abide reflects that same passion today through its innovative approach in addressing systemic racism and socioeconomic inequity within institutions designed to help people.
Currently, Abide operates a donation-based maternal healthcare clinic that offers prenatal care, postpartum doula support, education, and resources for the community of South Dallas. Abide’s vision is to provide quality, culturally congruent care while reducing infant and maternal mortality rates, the rate of low-birth-weight babies, and preterm birth, while improving breastfeeding rates, and increasing the number of Black student midwives and birth workers of color. Ultimately, we want to get babies to term, thriving in their first year, and we want their mothers to live to see them. Abide opened the doors of the first clinic of its kind on October 13, 2020. In the span of a year of its creation, Abide is set to be an accredited JJ WAY® Easy Access Clinic™(A Commonsense Childbirth Initiative) in 2021 and is gearing up to launch a capital campaign for a future birth center. Details coming soon.
Abide is committed to the three R’s: Rest. Resist. Restore. We believe that rest and resistance give birth to restoration and only through our collective efforts will we taste the fruit of redemptive justice. As a maternal justice organization, Abide seeks to uproot systems that are designed to harm while simultaneously planting seeds that lead to fruitful policies and life-affirming change.
