What is your name, where are you from, and what’s your story?
My name is Able Mable Thomas. Around 1986, I changed my name to Mabel Able Thomas. So no matter what, ‘Able’ would be a name I could have on the ballot. My story is… I have a destined life.
While in elementary school, I got a chance to debate the issue of ‘why go to the moon when you have people who need help in the United States, in the world…’. I believe by debating on the side of ‘there are resources and things that people in poverty around the world need’, that helped frame my ideology as to my love of helping people and reaching out and believing that people need support…
I have always loved sports, and also understood that academics was important. And so I did get a scholarship to go to Georgia State University, and one was an academic scholarship and one was a scholarship to play on the women’s first NCAA Women’s basketball team. I still consider myself a baller, community service, and going to church was what I do. And I was a Saint Mark AME church and then Cosmopolitan AME church where I am today.
Once I was at Georgia State, I was with the Student Government Association, and I went from Student Government Association to State Representative District, at that time was District 31. I love public service, I love politics, and I was elected at the age of 25 to State Representative and retired about three years ago at the height of my political career. So that’s my story.
How were you introduced to reproductive justice? What was it like when you all coined the term and started the movement?
I always felt I was pro-choice but I never really got into the integral part of it. Working as a consultant for National Black Women’s Health Project was my first organized entry into the reproductive movement. Cynthia Newville asked me to go to Chicago with her for a conference that was sponsored by the Ms. Foundation. And when I got there in July, I walked in a room and it was about 200 white women, and now I know there were only 12 Black women.
Spirit says to me, ‘go to each Black woman and ask them whether or not they would be willing to come to lunch with me’, and I went to each of those 11 women, besides myself, and asked them to come to lunch with me. I asked them who they were, what organization they worked for, and whether they believed what was being discussed resonated with us as Black women in terms of Black women’s health. And they basically said ‘it did to some degree, but there is more to be done.’
We ended up having women from Illinois, Georgia, New Jersey, Ohio, and I think a couple other states out of that group of 12 of us. And we, on that day, coined the phrase “Reproductive Justice”. Prior to that it was ‘reproductive rights’, ‘health’, ‘choices’, but no justice. And so I convened the 12 of us and we started Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice. It’s going on 31 years that we as Black women coined the phrase that didn’t exist before we said it.
What happened was that Planned Parenthood and other groups started using it as if they had created it. And Sister Song, Monica and some other people, step to Planned Parenthood and said, ‘that was Black women who started the reproductive justice movement, stop writing all the grants and getting all the money and not giving us what we’re due.’
That was the critical point, because after that SisterSong and other groups began to get money and grants and have the budgets needed for them to do the work. That was the master move the Lord gave me… to organize those 12 Black women in that room that day, and for us to come up with the phrase Reproductive Justice, coin that phrase, that before that moment had never been used. That’s my kind of claim to fame.
One aspect of reproductive justice is having access to doulas, midwives, and other forms of care that are often criminalized or shunned. What can you tell us about the criminalization of midwifery?
I think it’s a low down dirty shame that people don’t have a choice to have home births. And I also think if you look at the history of midwives, back in the old days, you couldn’t even go to a hospital. Midwives were the order of the day, as far as delivering babies. And even though they may not have had a big time degree, they were experts in their field and traveled from one part of the south, I’ll say rural areas, to urban areas delivering babies. But as time changed, it went from thousands of midwives to now maybe hundreds of midwives, if that many; because everywhere you go they try to put you in jail for home birth.
Mind you, even though things happen at hospitals a lot, if a midwife is in a situation where somebody turns them in, they try to prosecute them real strongly and use that as an example of why midwives have to be regulated, to the point that they need to be a nurse midwife or certain certifications, over and beyond the midwife that we knew with the black bag that would come in, deliver your baby safely and check on your baby.
I know the word ‘doula’ is being used more now, the doulas can be there, but they come in afterwards to make sure that those first weeks and whatever’s needed for the mother is taken care of. So, if anything, as it relates to the criminalization of doulas or criminalization of midwives, it’s ridiculous. It’s just another way to control the bodies of women, another way to exert power and money to the hospitals all over America that already have lawsuits against them for practices that do not serve mothers.
And there’s so many c-sections in America ’cause at the slightest problem, they’ll say, “oh, forget this. We are gonna do a c-section.” So many have come in to do natural births at hospitals, but in the end… c-section. And at the same time, we’re dealing with the issue of maternal mortality where they don’t listen to Black women. If a Black woman is going through pain, they think ‘Black women can take a lot of pain’. So if you might say, “okay I need something” or whatever they’ll say, “oh, everything’s okay”. There have been cases where Black women have died on the table, and that’s why Black women die three to four times more than white women at childbirth… So how can you have a normal society when Black women are dying at childbirth? And at the same time, they got children at home who then are susceptible to being in the foster care system and without a mother in America. It’s a dual-edged sword.
The maternal mortality crisis was a problem when you began this work many years ago, and is still a problem. In 2020, you along with other black women legislators passed the expansion of Medicaid for postpartum mothers. What inspired you to organize for this expansion?
I had somebody ask, “what are the issues of the day?” And I told them it’s a young lady named Renitta Shannon who has a bill dealing with maternal mortality. With Gloria Butler as the center lead, we were able to move it from having Medicaid for two months after you have a baby, to a year. And we believe that in some way that does save lives, because often the mother after two months still needs to go back to the doctor, but they had no health insurance, and Medicaid would only pay up to two months. So we really organized around that.
Sometimes I say the only people who have organized and led a movement that was successful around expanding Medicaid really was Black women, because we made sure that even though we had alliances with white women and others, we made sure that the Black women legislators led this particular issue in the state of Georgia. And when they were going before committees, even though something that was on that subcommittee helped, I basically instructed the Black women to take the lead. “Lead, it’s your issue”, “it’s Black women dying”. Nobody can tell a story, like a Black woman could tell a story.
That’s what I’m proud of — we took control of our issue. We were able to get $20 million in the budget to expand Medicaid as well as $500,000 for Morehouse School of Medicine for research community engagement. Even in the middle of Covid, we were able to put that $20 million in the budget to expand Medicaid. Then the following year, Gary Butler led the charge to go from six months of Medicaid coverage to 12. That was really teamwork, and how Black women can organize and make an impact.
As a Storyteller, what is one lesson that you would go back and tell your younger self? Would you speak up more, do something differently, or change anything?
Well, what I would’ve done when I was doing this work… I would’ve documented it. I was just doing the work. In a way it did elevate me, because when I would help a person, I wouldn’t even hardly get their name and information; or I’d get their name, but I never called them during election time and said, “can you help me ’cause I helped you?” A lot of political people, they take down names of everybody they helped, especially if they help them in a big way. I never did.
So it was a little unselfish, where I was, you know, just doing the work. But now I do believe I should have documented some of the highlights of the things I’ve done, but I never thought I had done enough. So when people say, “what about writing a book?” I didn’t think I’d done enough. But when I look back on my life, I had a destined life, and I had done enough to write a book much earlier…
One time I was in an airport and a state representative from Tennessee said, “are you Able Mable?” And I said, “yes.” She said, “I got the Able Mable Thomas Award”. I said, “what is the Able Mable Thomas Award?” And she says, “A group in Memphis Tennessee, called SisterReach, they do an award in the names of the women of the reproductive justice movement.” So I learned about the awards being given out, and while I was there, they surprised me, gave me an award, and asked me to speak. When I said to them that I was the convener, a whole room said “wow.” Because even though people know about the 12 mothers, they don’t know how we came together. And in some ways it was organic, but it wasn’t organic to the point that 12 women just walked into a room. Somebody had to go to those 12 women. And so when I told that group of women I was the convener, they went crazy, ’cause all the stories had been told, nobody ever said who convened them. I never knew that nobody knew it was me. That’s why I’m saying I would’ve told my story more and wrote earlier some of the stuff I’ve done.
That’s why I’m glad to do this interview, because it gives me a chance to think about my life and how the Lord has used me in my life to make an impact on womens and womens’ health. Also, people don’t know I authored the first mandated benefit in the state of Georgia that requires insurance companies to pay for mammograms, pap smears, and the prostate cancer test.
What I do know is that we are a family, and if we understood the power we have as Black people working together, we can change a lot of things. Now we are in a climate where we are gonna have to work together in order to survive. We were here in the beginning and we shall be in the end.
I love it. What a wonderful way to end our conversation. I really appreciate you and as you opened up your story more and more, it just gave so much insight. It’s gonna be invaluable. And you still have time to write that book.
Yes. I’m dibbling on it now, every now and then… So I do a little bit of it, but I’m kind of frustrated sometimes that I can’t remember all this stuff.That’s why I said the only thing I wish I did, is wrote it down earlier. So I say to people, do a book where you write down your stuff so you know what you did. Yes. And journal, journaling is good.
And what would you call the book? How would you name it?
Well, right now I’m at the word A Destined Life. That’s why I said it several times, A Destined Life, because now I think back over my life I was destined to do these things, but it was probably something else five years ago. But right now I’m at A Destined Life, you know?