Advocates

Park Cannon’s ascent into politics was fast and intense: She voted for the first time at age 21. Three years later, she became the youngest member of Georgia’s General Assembly.

It was Election Day 2012, and Cannon, at the time a student at UNC-Chapel Hill, happened to overhear people on campus talking about what was at stake: namely, whether or not same-sex marriage would ever be legalized in North Carolina. Cannon, who is queer, didn’t hesitate. She registered to vote on the spot, and cast her first vote that same day. 

Her vote helped to secure a second term for Barack Obama, and three years later, the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Obergefell v. Hodges codified the right for same-sex couples to marry. Cannon’s work, however, had only just begun. 

Cannon embedded herself in activism groups and made plans to study law. She interned for organizations like NARAL and after graduation accepted a position as a wellness advocate at the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta. It was there that she first met and began collaborating with her home district’s House Representative, Simone Bell. 

Cannon describes Bell, who in 2009 became the nation’s first openly queer Black woman elected to a state house, as “a truth-teller.” One day, Bell called Cannon directly to tell her she was accepting a position at Lambda Legal and vacating her seat: Would Cannon consider running for office?

In 2016, Cannon did indeed run in the special election to represent Georgia’s 58th District, a slash of intown Atlanta that ribbons from Cascade Heights through the Old Fourth Ward to Midtown. She describes the race as a “crash course” in everything from logo design, to canvassing strategy, to securing a domain name (hers was snapped up by her opponent early in the race). Still, it didn’t stop her. Cannon won and at 24 became the youngest lawmaker at the Georgia Gold Dome.

It took awhile for Aimee Adatto Freeman, a business consultant born and raised in New Orleans, to decide whether and when to run for office. Politics was something she first started considering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when she got involved in the community through her work with the Bureau of Governmental Research. The timing wasn’t quite right back then, but in 2019, the opportunity arose to represent District 98, which encompasses Uptown New Orleans, and Freeman leaped at the chance. “I realized it would be best for me to go up to the state, because that's where I could impact policy changes that really make a big difference and fight against policy changes that I disagree with,” she says.  

Despite being the first person in her family ever to run for office, politics felt like a natural fit for Freeman. She ran in the state’s jungle primary and won in a field of seven candidates, then won her runoff. 

In Baton Rouge, Freeman is a Democrat in a Republican-dominated Congress, and a female lawmaker in a male-dominated legislative body, representing a progressive, pro-choice district in a state that, since 2022, won’t allow abortions even for rape victims. “Because of my career, I've always worked in male-dominated worlds,” she says, adding that she’s often been the only woman on an executive committee. “You have to be really willing to listen to their viewpoints … I do a lot of listening. None of this is new to me, in the way that I have to behave to do this stuff.”

Since being elected, Freeman has authored bills eliminating the “Pink Tax” on period products and diapers and requiring termination of higher-education employees who neglect to report Title IX violations. But the impetus for perhaps her most personal work started years before her legislative career. 

Freeman remembers the night she got the call from her father in 2009: Her sister, who was nearly in her third trimester and had been admitted to New Orleans’ Touro Hospital three months earlier for high-risk-pregnancy complications, was in emergency surgery to save her life. Freeman and her family had spent the last three months shuttling back and forth to the hospital, staying with her sister, helping her brother-in-law, and caring for her 3-year-old nephew. That night, Freeman’s sister survived, but her baby, whose lungs were underdeveloped, did not. 

Following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to upend abortion law nationally codified for almost half a century by Roe v. Wade, the South has become  an abortion desert. In states like Louisiana, abortion is outlawed even for survivors of rape and incest, and outside of cases where abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother, the law also punishes physicians who provide abortion with prison time and six-figure fines. Meanwhile, Louisiana has one of the country’s worst maternal mortality rates, which experts worry the abortion ban will only exacerbate. 

Making the state less dangerous for mothers is personal to Freeman. “My sister had the ultimate resources,” she says. “She had family members who were doctors who could advocate directly on her behalf. Not everyone has that.”

A staunch advocate for maternal health, Park Cannon is working to secure Medicaid reimbursement for the use of birth doulas – trained professionals who guide women during pregnancy and labor, offering physical and emotional support, education, and resources to their clients. Doulas can make pregnancy and childbirth safer for at-risk populations.

Before they each entered politics, there was little overlap between Cannon’s background as an openly queer, Black activist and Freeman’s life as a business consultant and working mother of four. But these days, as progressive lawmakers in conservative states, the two women share similar challenges and frustrations: Progress is slow; compromise is necessary; working across the aisle is required; optimism can be hard to maintain. And a support network of other lawmakers fighting tooth and nail for equity in their state — that can feel like a life raft. 

In 2021, Cannon and Freeman found such a network when they became Unum Fellows. E Pluribus Unum (EPU) established its fellowship program in 2020 to back Southerners, from municipal leaders to college campus activists, with ambitious plans to build equity and tackle disparities in the South. The 2021 fellowship program focused on lawmakers at the state level, equipping them with resources, expertise, and practical support to help bring projects and policy to fruition. 

“Our goal is really to find people who are doing this unbelievable work, and support them,” says Scott Hutcheson, EPU’s executive director. “What better way to do that than to put our leverage behind their work to help actually make progress happen?” 

State legislators, he adds, are uniquely positioned to effect change that directly impacts the day-to-day lives of their constituents. “At the state level, you can really dig into systems in a different way,” he says. And running for office doesn’t require deep D.C. connections or an arsenal of cash. (Take Cannon, whose scrappy, learn-as-you-go approach didn’t stop her from rolling up her sleeves and winning her race. “I'm really passionate now about helping folks know that you don't have to have all of that figured out,” she says.) 

But being a state legislator, Hutcheson points out, is a part-time job: The people tasked with making laws during a legislative session might be dentists, real estate brokers, or teachers the rest of the year. They may not have the resources, extra time, or people power to do comprehensive deep dives on every angle of an issue — which can make it difficult, even for the most ambitious legislators, to push a project through in one session. How much further might an ambitious changemaker like Cannon or Freeman get with researchers, data analysts, policy advisers, and subject matter experts at their fingertips? “We recognized, from the very beginning, that giving money wasn't going to be as effective or useful to a state legislator as [giving them] people, brains, eyes, hands,” says Hutcheson. 

Unum Fellows come to the program with a big idea. In return, EPU furnishes them with support, expertise, accountability, and more — in Hutcheson’s words, whatever it takes to get their project to the finish line. “And when you find someone like a Park or an Aimee,” he says, “you give it everything you have.”

Seated across from me on a couch at Kenekt Cooperative, a Black-owned cafe and incubator in Southwest Atlanta, Park Cannon describes the birth she supported earlier in the week, an 18-year-old first-time mom. “Support” encompassed far more than mantras and counterpressure during labor, though: In the final two months of her pregnancy, the mother lost her housing. Cannon and her fellow doulas helped her secure a car seat, get transportation to her prenatal and lactation appointments, and navigate applying for a housing voucher waitlist. “It has felt incredible,” says Cannon. 

Cannon’s journey into supporting people giving birth began with supporting people choosing not to birth: She started as an abortion doula in 2014, then gained her certification as a labor doula in 2018. (When she isn’t in session, Cannon works both as a doula and as a freelance political consultant.) Birth work feels spiritual to her; she often wonders whether there are midwives or other birthworkers in her lineage. “It feels like light work, it feels like shadow work,” she says. It has also become a central component of her career as a lawmaker, including her time as an Unum Fellow. 

Birth doulas – trained perinatal professionals who guide women during their pregnancy and labor – offer physical and emotional support, education, and resources to their birthing clients. In the past six months, Cannon and nine other doulas have supported 45 families in Georgia’s Douglas and Cobb counties through the Wellstar Doula Program, spearheaded by Cannon, supported by the Wellstar Foundation, and funded with a local government grant from Cobb-Douglas Public Health. (The week Cannon and I met, the program had just received an additional $30,000 grant from Molina Healthcare to extend its services.) Cannon came to the Unum Fellowship with the idea; EPU helped her gather data and research other states with similar programs in place. 

Families in Cobb County or Douglas County who sign up for the pilot program are matched with a doula who will follow them through the latter half of their pregnancy. The doulas meet with parents for prenatal visits at 28 weeks, 32 weeks, and 36 weeks to discuss birth plans and prep for labor. In the final weeks of pregnancy, they’re on call to offer guidance, comfort, and support through labor and delivery. During the postpartum period, a doula will visit the family to check in and provide additional resources, like breastfeeding help, as needed. “It really wraps its arms around the client, who otherwise would be traversing that healthcare experience by themselves,” Cannon says. 

Doulas, Cannon explains, don’t offer medical care. They don’t make medical decisions on someone’s behalf. And they don’t catch babies. Their role, Cannon explains, is more like that of “an auntie” — the one who knows exactly which tea to make, which rub to do, which essential oils to bring. 

And doulas could also play a critical role in the South’s maternal mortality crisis, where states like Georgia have some of the most shockingly high maternal mortality rates in the developed world. In Georgia, provider shortages and hospital closures make it hard to access medical care: Over a third of the state’s 159 counties are maternity care deserts (which March of Dimes defines as “areas without access to birthing facilities or maternity care providers”). Meanwhile, Georgia’s maternal mortality rate — which has long been one of the worst in the country — is getting worse, and low-income women of color bear the brunt of the crisis.

Even though doulas don’t provide clinical care, the evidence shows that they can help make pregnancy and childbirth safer. In a 2023 review of 16 primary studies, doulas were associated with reduced rates of C-section, induction, epidural, premature labor, duration of labor, low birth weight, infant mortality rates, and postpartum PTSD. But those who could benefit the most from doula care likely can’t afford to pay $1,000 or more out of pocket for one. That’s why maternal health advocates suggest that reimbursing doulas through Medicaid could be a major step toward healthier outcomes for moms and babies. 

Securing Medicaid reimbursement is, and has been, Cannon’s long-term goal. Ten other states have implemented Medicaid reimbursement for doulas, with five more in the process. But in Georgia,  where lawmakers like Cannon had to fight for years to even extend pregnancy Medicaid coverage beyond a paltry six weeks postpartum, Cannon knows full Medicaid coverage is the moonshot vision. For now, she’s focusing on exhausting all other options to show that it works. “I want to see our maternal mortality data improve over the next four years,” she says. “And I believe with this program, we can show it.” 

Thomecia Busby is a doula who works with the organization Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Georgia to grow the perinatal workforce in the state. (Cannon actually completed her doula training through the organization’s Building Perinatal Support Professionals program.) Doulas, Busby says, serve an important purpose when it comes to improving outcomes for Georgia’s mothers and infants. “Our role is to emotionally and physically support our clients, but also to educate our clients,” she says. “You're more informed, more educated, and you feel a little more emotionally stable because someone is there to support you.” 

Those positive effects seem to be especially significant among more at-risk populations. Elizabeth Mosley, a public health researcher and affiliated faculty at Emory’s Center for Reproductive Health Research in the Southeast (RISE), says that doulas can function as a buffer against social determinants of health like poverty and race. Low-income families are in “a double bind, where the people who are at highest risk of these negative outcomes have the lowest ability to purchase the things that might improve these outcomes,” says Mosley. “By providing doula care to Medicaid enrollees, we would be providing doula care to the people who are most at risk of negative perinatal outcomes.”

Her own sister’s close brush with maternal mortality is what keeps Aimee Adatto Freeman focused on passing legislation that would, among other changes, remove prison time for doctors who provide abortions.

On May 10, 2023, in the Louisiana Capitol, Rep. Aimee Adatto Freeman stood up and embraced her colleague, Rep. Delisha Boyd, whose bill to allow abortion exceptions for victims of rape and incest had just been rejected. Then, with only 90 seconds to speak, Freeman shared the story of her own sister’s close brush with maternal mortality. 

Though Freeman remained stoic in its telling, the story is devastating. “But what I’ll tell you,” Freeman said to the House Administration of Criminal Justice Committee, “is that we had to trust, as a family, the medical professionals to know that this was what my sister needed.” House Bill 522 — Freeman’s bill, and the focus of her time as an Unum Fellow — was an attempt to restore some of that trust by making criminal penalties less severe for physicians who perform abortions in the state. 

Under Louisiana’s abortion law, which was passed in 2006 and went into effect after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health in 2022, doctors can face 15-year prison sentences and six-figure fines for providing an abortion. And that law doesn’t distinguish between a doctor intentionally terminating a pregnancy or not. (Freeman uses the example of a dermatologist writing a prescription for a patient who doesn’t even realize they’re pregnant: If that prescription then causes the loss of the pregnancy, that doctor could be imprisoned for a decade.) “Having the threat of jail over doctors is harming even the healthy pregnancies in our state,” she told lawmakers that day. 

Freeman’s proposed legislation would remove prison time and lessen fines; allow just one physician to certify a pregnancy as “medically futile” instead of the requisite two; and add language about “specific intent” to the current law.

Undaunted by headwinds in a conservative state, Freeman says she will continue in her efforts to reduce the harm wrought by Louisiana’s abortion laws. “It’s really frustrating, but it’s where I live. You can only work within the confines of where you are.”

After Freeman shared her story, supporters of her bill came forward to speak in support of the bill, share their own experiences of the current law’s unintended consequences, and answer questions from the committee. Obstetricians spoke about their fear of being prosecuted for doing their jobs, and shared stories of women hemorrhaging or dying of sepsis because doctors were too afraid to act quickly. An ER doctor described the logistical challenges of needing to stop and find a second doctor to certify a pregnancy as “medically futile” in the middle of a medical emergency. Women spoke of being denied medical care for miscarriage or pregnancy complications. One mother, Nancy Davis, learned at 10 weeks that her baby had acrania, a rare and fatal condition. She said she was denied a termination because doctors were afraid of being prosecuted. “At that moment I knew I was being forced to carry my baby, and to bury my baby,” she told the committee. She had to travel 1,400 miles without her family to terminate the pregnancy. 

It’s a scene that’s been played out over and over again in statehouses around the country, and especially in the South, following the overturn of Roe: those directly impacted by abortion law laying bare their own trauma, beseeching those writing the laws to bear witness. 

Despite these arguments, Freeman did not have the votes to move the bill forward, and voluntarily deferred it in order to take it back to the drawing board. When we speak several months later, she still hasn’t given up on it — especially the portion of the bill about establishing specific intent, to which she says her Republican colleagues seemed receptive. 

Since Louisiana’s trigger law went into effect last summer, pro-choice organization Lift Louisiana, which worked closely with Freeman to help craft her bill, has focused on finding ways to reduce the unintended consequences of the abortion ban, both for patients and doctors. Michelle Erenberg, the group’s executive director, says that doctors feel forced to make an impossible choice: “between taking care of their patient in the way their medical practice has trained them to do, versus potentially losing their liberty as a result of providing that care.” And while the amendment wasn’t successful, Erenberg hasn’t lost hope. “There's a whole crop of new legislators [this session],” she says. “We might have an opportunity to educate them and make them understand how important amending that portion of the law is to the provision of high-quality pregnancy care, which is a huge problem in our state.” 

Freeman isn’t trying to make abortion legal in Louisiana (though she’s confident this would pass if left up to voters — the majority of the state’s voters, as in every other state, support some level of abortion rights) but simply trying to reduce some of the harm done by the current law. I ask her if this is discouraging. “It's really frustrating, but it's where I live,” she says. “You can only work within the confines of where you are.” Then she recites a Jane Goodall quote that popped up on her meditation app that very morning: Lasting change is a series of compromises, and compromise is all right as long as your values don't change. “That really hit me,” she says. “If all I get is one [piece of the bill] out of three, that's a compromise, but I'm not changing my values … and just getting that one piece is going to help somebody.”

From afar, the challenge that progressive Southern lawmakers like Freeman and Cannon face appears nearly insurmountable: bridging massive gaps, but fighting for the most basic scraps with which to do so. It is a frustrating, exhausting battle that requires a well of both hope and pragmatism in equal measure (not to mention skillful negotiation and deft diplomacy — currently, neither Freeman nor Cannon can pass a bill without garnering at least some Republican support). These lawmakers find victory not just in the banner moments, but in the tiny footholds of progress. EPU’s Scott Hutcheson calls these “moments of quiet brilliance.” Add them up, and they start to build inroads toward progress and equity. 

“It's what we call the microprogressions,” he says. “Moments where you make a little progress, and you use the success of that project to do another one.” These are the moments, Hutcheson says, in which equity is built. You start with vision, and determination. Believing that something better can be built, and then daring to try. You prove the naysayers wrong. And then — perhaps most critically — you keep going.

~ In partnership with E Pluribus Unum ~

Gray Chapman is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Atlanta Magazine, Garden & Gun, and many other publications. Her creative nonfiction essays have appeared in two anthologies: “Southern Women” (HarperCollins, October 2019) and “Why We Cook” (Workman Publishing, March 2021). "Still, Life" is her first film project. She lives in the Grant Park neighborhood of Atlanta with her husband, Dane, their son, Anders, and two mostly bad but beloved dogs, Jerry and Juno.

Kathleen Flynn is a New Orleans-based photojournalist and documentary filmmaker who focuses on stories of struggle and injustice. Flynn has spent over 20 years as a working journalist, including a decade at the Tampa Bay Times and three years at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. She has covered in-depth community news, veterans issues throughout the country, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in Thailand, immigration in Mexico, post-conflict Liberia, India’s booming pharmaceutical industry, and the war in Afghanistan. Her work has been recognized with six regional Emmys, honors from the Overseas Press Club, World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year International, the Edward R. Murrow awards, the Nieman Foundation, the National Press Photographers Association's Best of Photojournalism, and with a Casey Medal, awarded for the nation's best reporting on children, youth, and families. In 2019 the National Press Photographers Association awarded its Humanitarian Award to Flynn for her career covering human rights issues and injustices. She is a member of Women Photograph.

Audra Melton is a commercial and editorial photographer based in Atlanta. Her work features a combination of storytelling and portraiture, often with a focus on social issues.

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