Actor Tatyana Ali holds a Baby Yams quilt. Ali’s baby blankets raise funds and awareness for Black and Indigenous birth workers.

Manfred Baumann

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Manfred Baumann

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Actor and singer Tatyana Ali has become an important voice in a growing movement to improve maternity health outcomes for Black and Indigenous mothers and babies by addressing systemic racism and inequity in maternity care. Ali has been calling for reproductive justice since experiencing what she calls “obstetric violence” during the delivery of her first-born son Aszi in 2016.

Ali, 47, says being a mother is the most important role of her life, as she embarks on the latest chapter of her Hollywood career. She will compete on the new season of Dancing with the Stars on ABC, starting Tuesday, September 15. Ali is perhaps best known for her role as the lovable Ashley Banks on the NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in the 1990s. Since then, she has acted in TV and digital series, movies and released an album.

Ali and her husband Vaughn Rasberry are raising two sons, Alejandro and Aszi. In an interview with NPR, she said it was the birth of her oldest, Aszi, that eventually made her want to speak out for Black and Indigenous mothers.

Ali described having a normal pregnancy with Aszi and the days of waiting for his birth as filled with joy.

“So excited and just waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. My mother’s song when she was waiting for me was ‘cuando, cuando, cuando – when when, when? When are you coming?’ I sang that song. I thought we were prepared,” she said.

But during the delivery at the hospital, Ali says her birth plan was immediately ignored. And she was physically restrained.

“It went from a small group of people in the room to many people in the room screaming, yelling at me,” she said. “I was held down by about four people.”

Ali described chaos and aggressive and dismissive behavior by the doctor and nurses.

“Faces, screaming, terror, panic. I needed somebody to help me,” she said.

Ali says her hospital records detail the doctor using a high-risk emergency procedure that is rarely used. The Zavanelli maneuver is a last-resort procedure performed when a baby is stuck inside the birth canal. Ali says in her case, her son was already crowning when the doctor pushed him back inside of her. “After they pushed him inside me, and I remember roaring. I convulsed after that. Like my body – I can hear the bed just go buh-buh-buh-buh,” she said, describing the sound of the bed shaking. “And I was out.”