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 probably the greatest kids’s hospitals in the USA. Each single day, I watched her chest rise and fall with fierce willpower—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 saved watch. Questioning if she would survive the night time.
My then-husband and I each labored full-time. We had what individuals name “good jobs.” We had non-public insurance coverage. We had finished issues the so-called “proper” means. And nonetheless, my daughter’s and my hospital payments climbed towards a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars}.
Medicaid saved us.
It stepped in the place our non-public insurance coverage fell quick. It lined the care that helped my daughter dwell. It gave me house to get well from the issues of her beginning. And since I certified for Medicaid, I additionally certified for WIC, which ensured there was meals within the fridge and system within the cupboard after I couldn’t nurse. With out these packages, I might nonetheless be in debt in the present day, virtually twenty years later. I may 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 get well and thrive. It gave us a second probability to dwell with dignity.
So after 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 “Massive Stunning Invoice,” handed July 3, 2025, is all the things however stunning. It’s treacherous. It slices by Medicaid and shreds the very helps that preserve households like mine afloat. It does this all whereas handing over $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to billionaires and companies.
For Black girls, particularly, this invoice isn’t just unhealthy coverage; it’s a blueprint for abandonment and deep hurt. The invoice contains 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 lined by Medicaid. And nonetheless, Black girls are 3 times extra more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white girls. 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 can be mere misfortune. Will probably be the results of intentional coverage. Will probably be neglect baked into legislation.
The Massive Stunning Invoice additionally targets Deliberate Parenthood, stripping Medicaid funding from clinics that provide 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 individuals, lots of them Black and Brown girls, rely closely on these amenities for reproductive care. And when these clinics shut, Black girls can be hit hardest. We already die from cervical most cancers at charges 65% greater than white girls. Denying entry to reproductive care isn’t simply merciless; for Black girls, it’s a calculated determination — a quiet, systemic verdict on who’s allowed to heal and who’s left to die.
One other means this atrocious invoice harms Black girls is in the way it expands work necessities for SNAP, demanding that recipients log 80 hours per 30 days of labor, volunteering, or coaching, at the same time as prices rise and wages stagnate. However let’s be clear: Black girls are already among the many most lively 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 value, again and again.
We all know this invoice isn’t about encouraging work. It’s about punishing poverty. It’s about turning starvation right into a take a look at and paperwork right into a weapon. And we additionally know who can be damage most. Practically 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 should. And too many hardworking households will internalize their struggles, believing their starvation is a private failure, quite 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 youngster care subsidies are additionally deeply slashed by the “Massive Stunning Invoice,” stripping away helps that Black girls depend on to remain housed and maintain down jobs. With out these important packages, extra of us can be pushed into homelessness, and extra of our kids can be left with out care—a actuality underscored by reporting that the proposal would reduce roughly 43% of federal housing help, affecting as much as 3.8 million individuals.
When these foundations crumble, households aren’t simply harassed; they’re left weak to displacement and systemic breakdown. And when housing turns into unstable or a mother or father misses a medical appointment as a result of she will’t get off work, the federal government doesn’t ship assist. It sends Youngster Protecting Companies to surveil and separate households.
Poverty turns into neglect, dad and mom turn out to be suspects, and kids turn out 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 Youngster Welfare Data Gateway explains, poverty-related hardships like housing instability and lack of childcare usually result in youngster welfare involvement, even when no hurt has occurred. We should assume deeply about what number of extra Black households can 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 girls have all the time turned shortage into sanctuary. We’ve all the time constructed networks of care from the crumbs we have been handed. By way of mutual help, 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 girls that we are able to’t depend on programs to save lots of us. These efforts are usually 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 girls deserve greater than survival. We deserve pleasure, relaxation, neighborhood, and security. Not divestment, surveillance, and punishment. And till this nation learns how you can give us these issues, we’ll proceed constructing them with our personal arms, in our personal names, for our personal individuals.
The “Massive Stunning Invoice” isn’t stunning—it’s brutal. A love letter to the rich, and a warning to the remainder of us. However we’re not warnings. And because the nice poet and thinker Audre Lorde reminds us: we’re not 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 are able to’t be silent on this second. We should manage, protest, defend, and pour into one another. As a result of solidarity will carry us ahead.
And we are going to 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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