Testimonies and Healing: Anti‐oppressive Research with Black Women and the Implications for Compassionate Ethical Care

Abstract

Anti‐oppressive qualitative inquiry can be a powerful tool for members of marginalized communities to engage in storytelling that is both therapeutic and transformative. For individuals navigating marginalization due to multiple systems of stigmatization, the process of telling their story offers the opportunity to engage in awareness raising and health promotion that can benefit their communities. Formerly incarcerated Black women are one such community experiencing multilevel marginalization. This essay explores ways in which the qualitative interview can provide contexts for women to name their experiences of oppression, reconstruct the meanings they attach to them, and channel their stories of navigating harm to promote the health of others. Given the legacy of research atrocities that have disproportionately harmed already‐marginalized communities, this piece seeks to advance practices of ethical care and compassion in qualitative inquiry that promote greater health and the building of relational trust in both research and clinical settings.

Renewed calls for abortion-related research in the post-Roe era

“…Research ethics relates to the moral principles undergirding the design and execution of research projects, and concerns itself with the technicalities of ethical questions related to the research process, such as informed consent, power relations, and confidentiality (8). Critical insights and reflections from reproductive justice, community engagement, and applied ethics frameworks have bolstered existing research ethics scholarship and discourse by underscoring the importance of meaningful engagement with community stakeholders-bringing attention to overlapping structures of oppression, including racism, sexism, and ways that these structures are perpetuated in the research process (9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19).…”