Welcome to On the TEB Bookshelf — a series where we take time to talk about books that spark conversation, reflection, and learning about the world of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum care. Sometimes these will be new releases. Sometimes they’ll be foundational texts that shaped how we think about this work. Either way, our goal is the same: to read together, think together, and open up new ways of seeing the systems and stories that shape perinatal life.

This month, we’ve been reading Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America by Irin Carmon. The publisher reached out and sent us a copy, and we were immediately curious — because the questions this book explores are the same ones so many of us have been asking in real time: What does it mean to be pregnant in America right now? How do policy, politics, and care systems shape that experience? And how do we make sense of it all in the wake of Roe’s reversal?
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Why This Book Stands Out To Us

As I got about a third of the way through — one thing felt immediately clear — Unbearable is written for the world we’re currently living in. So much of the literature we encounter in our training or professional development speaks to earlier eras — important work, yes, but sometimes distant from the shifting landscape of reproductive health today.

This book feels present. It’s grounded in the political and cultural realities of a post-Roe America and told through five deeply human stories of pregnancy — each from a different corner of the U.S., each with its own circumstances, race, class, and context. Together, these stories form a wider portrait of what it means to navigate pregnancy and birth in systems that often fail to protect, respect, or even recognize the people inside them.

At The Educated Birth, our mission has always been to make education and representation tools for equity — and that’s what makes reading a book like this feel so meaningful. Unbearable doesn’t just document personal stories; it exposes the systems surrounding them. It invites readers to think about how access, policy, and bias intersect — and how those intersections affect everything from safety to self-determination.

As someone immersed in perinatal education, I find myself reading this book with two simultaneous perspectives: the professional one, thinking about what it reveals about systems and care, and the personal one, recognizing the emotional and human truths threaded through every story.
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A Q+A with Irin

UNBEARABLE describes the U.S.'s broken reproductive system through the stories of five women — how did you choose which stories to include, and what do you think they reveal that policy analysis alone might miss? I chose these five women because their interconnected experiences reveal how the same warped system touches all of us, from Brooklyn to Alabama, and that our lives don’t fit into neat categories of reproductive care. Policy analysis can't convey what it feels like for Hali to sleep on a concrete floor still bleeding from birth because the jail is overrun with other pregnant and postpartum women with positive drug tests, or how Yashica could go from being a teen mom in poverty to being a doctor — but fighting for her pregnant patients is the biggest challenge yet.

The U.S. has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among wealthy nations. What do you believe are the root causes of this epidemic, and how does UNBEARABLE help us understand them differently? This isn't an accident. It's the predictable result of a system designed to prioritize some people's lives over others, that goes back to American medicine’s history of experimenting on enslaved Black women. We have a healthcare system organized around profit, not care, that can single out pregnant women out for special punishment if they make mistakes, and which segregates some kinds of reproductive care, which since Dobbs has also cost women their lives.

How did your personal experience of pregnancy shape the writing of this book? Being pregnant at the peak of the pandemic in New York — contemplating giving birth alone in a mask or, after the city imposed a curfew on protesters that summer of 2020, laboring at a police checkpoint — I channeled my personal fears into reporting on what was happening in hospitals, and into learning as much as I could about birth in case I had to do it on my own. Being six months pregnant when Dobbs leaked reminded me how inextricably linked different pregnancy experiences are, and crystallized my desire to write this book. Respectful midwifery care during my second pregnancy also showed me what's possible when someone treats you like a whole person.

What shocked you the most during your research, either in the history of reproductive care or in the practices of the current system? The banality of how institutional neglect kills people—it's not always dramatic villains, but systems that don't value certain lives enough to notice patterns or demand better. Learning that one doctor made virtually the same life-threatening surgical error with two women years apart, with no accountability in between, took my breath away.

What myths about being pregnant in America today do you hope to dispel with UNBEARABLE? One myth is that if you do everything "right," make every recommended choice, have every recommended resource, you'll be fine. But pregnancy is inherently unpredictable, and our system punishes anyone who diverges from the script. I also want to challenge the myth that speaking honestly about pregnancy's risks is "fearmongering"; the structures of medicine, law and culture make pregnancy much harder than it needs to be.

In your opinion, what does real structural reform look like to address this crisis of poor pregnancy care in the U.S.? We need fundamental recognition that pregnant people are full human beings deserving respect, autonomy, and safe, comprehensive care. The infrastructure for controlling pregnancy was built over decades, but the women in my book prove that another way is possible.
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Join the Conversation

We’ll be inviting Irin Carmon to speak more with us in coming months, offering more insight into what inspired the book and what she hopes readers take away from it. In the meantime, if you’re reading Unbearable (or planning to), we’d love to hear from you: What’s resonating for you? What’s challenging you? What connections do you see to the work we’re doing together as a community?

Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America by Irin Carmon is available wherever books are sold — check in with your favorite local bookstore. You can also learn more about the book and the author at irincarmon.com

Until next time — happy reading, and thank you for being part of this growing conversation.