Liberation Place
Liberation Place is a free community resource hub offering essential maternity, baby, and reproductive health supplies, along with trusted referrals and information on how to connect to all types of reproductive healthcare—including abortion care, prenatal services, and more. Rooted in community care and equity, it’s a welcoming space where people can access what they need with dignity, no questions asked.
Open Monday-Friday from Noon to 6pm. There are no forms to fill out and you do not need to bring anything. Just come on by!
Find us at “The Spot” on Douglas, just East of Tanya’s Soup Kitchen.
The Matrescence Center
The Matrescence Center is a healing space designed for Black and Brown parents to connect, rest, and thrive through culturally-rooted offerings like meditation, workshops, a lactation clinic, and a community library. Centered in joy and collective care, it nurtures the wellbeing of families during the transformative journey of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.
The Matrescence Center’s hours vary weekly. Check our events calendar to stay up to date on our schedule of classes, workshops, and drop-in days.
Find us across from Century 2 in the courtyard across from Papa Johns. (Look for the purple flag.) Park in the visitor parking garage for free- don’t forget to bring your parking ticket for validation.
become a doula
Kansas Birth Justice Society’s Catalyst Doula Training is preparing 200 community-based doulas across Kansas this year.
This evidence based hybrid program combines self-paced online learning with in-person training focused on hands-on skills and practical readiness. Rooted in a reproductive justice framework, our training equips doulas to understand how personal experiences, systemic harms, and health outcomes intersect.
Our goal is to improve birth outcomes and advance equity for birthing people and babies across Kansas. Scholarships are available thanks to generous support from the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund and Healthy Blue.
Find a doula
Looking for a doula? We can help!
Our Kansas Doula Directory is a searchable, community-driven resource designed to connect birthing families with doulas who can provide culturally responsive and geographically accessible support. Whether you’re seeking a doula who shares your language, cultural background, or values, our directory makes it easy to find a skilled professional in your area. Whether you’re a first-time parent or supporting someone on their birth journey, the Kansas Doula Directory helps you find the care that feels like family.
What is our work rooted in?
LEgacy
Our work is rooted in the powerful legacy of community-centered birth. We honor the wisdom and practices of the grand midwives—Black, Indigenous, and immigrant women who delivered generations with skill, dignity, and love. By revitalizing this tradition, we are reclaiming a model of care that centers the needs, voices, and lived experiences of marginalized communities. This is ancestral work. This is liberation work.
Justice
We are rooted in the belief that birth justice is inseparable from racial, economic, and reproductive justice. Our work challenges the systems that harm Black, Brown, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, and low-income communities. We fight for the right to give birth—or not—to parent in safe, supported environments, and to thrive. Justice means shifting power, centering those most impacted, and building a future where everyone has access to respectful, culturally affirming care.
Liberation
Our vision is collective liberation—where all people are free to make decisions about their bodies, births, and families without fear or coercion. Liberation means more than surviving—it means living with dignity, joy, and self-determination. We build systems of care rooted in mutual aid, community wisdom, and love, because true liberation begins when we reclaim birth as a site of power, not oppression.
Advocacy
Kansas Birth Justice Society leads bold, community-rooted advocacy to advance birth and reproductive justice across Kansas. Our work addresses the root causes of health inequities while building power in the hands of those most impacted.
In 2022, we worked alongside a broad coalition to help defeat the “Value Them Both” amendment, which would have stripped constitutional protections for abortion in Kansas. That same year, we partnered with the Kansas Birth Equity Network (KBEN) to lead efforts pushing for more community representation in the state’s maternal mortality review process. We continue to advocate for reforms that ensure accountability and transparency, including the formation of a maternal morbidity review process and a community review board—so that the lived experiences and identities of those most impacted are central to understanding and preventing harm.
We are proud coalition partners in both the Kansas Paid Family Leave campaign and the development of the Kansas Momnibus, a policy package designed to improve maternal health outcomes and address systemic disparities in care.
Our team successfully championed Medicaid reimbursement for community-based doulas, helping shape the state plan amendment that now allows doulas to be compensated for their essential work—a major step toward equity in perinatal care.
In 2023–2024, we founded the Kansas Doula Alliance, a growing statewide network that organizes and uplifts doulas through collective advocacy, professional development, and peer support—ensuring that birth workers are not only trained but protected, valued, and heard.
Our latest initiative, the Rise and Reclaim Tour, was a powerful statewide listening project that centered the voices of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color on their experiences with birth and reproductive health. These insights will shape a forthcoming policy white paper, outlining a community-informed, community-centered path to birth justice in Kansas.
We are also actively fighting an unjust prison nursery bill that proposes housing infants in the Topeka Correctional Facility for up to three years. We reject the notion that a prison is a safe or appropriate place for a newborn. These funds should be invested in community-based alternatives that allow mothers to remain with their babies and access real support systems that reduce recidivism. We advocate for care, not cages—and we call on lawmakers to think beyond carceral systems and toward liberation.
At every step, we continue to build power through voter education and civic engagement, ensuring our communities are informed, equipped, and empowered to shape policies that impact their lives.
Our story
Kansas Birth Justice Society is a Black- and Brown-led organization founded in Wichita, Kansas, in 2020 by seven community members determined to transform how reproductive care is experienced in our state. From the beginning, our work has been rooted in grassroots listening sessions with BIPOC families and birthing people—centering their voices, truths, and visions for justice.
Born from personal loss and collective resolve, our founder Sapphire Garcia turned the stillbirth of her daughter into a life’s work: challenging the systemic violence that harms Black, Brown, Indigenous, queer, trans, and low-income communities. What began as a local effort has grown into a statewide movement grounded in reproductive justice, Black feminist traditions, and the legacy of the grand midwives.
In 2022, we opened our first public office—the Birth Justice Center—on the North Broadway corridor in Wichita. It became a hub for piloting programs and building deeper community relationships. As our work expanded, we transitioned into two specialized spaces: Liberation Place, a mutual aid hub offering free reproductive and infant care supplies, and The Matrescence Center, a wellness space focused on joy, connection, and healing for Black and Brown families.
Since then, we’ve trained hundreds of community-based doulas, advanced statewide policy—including Medicaid reimbursement for doulas and maternal health equity legislation—and co-led the fight for community representation in maternal mortality and morbidity reviews. We’ve organized to protect abortion access, fought unjust prison nursery legislation, and helped defeat the “Value Them Both” amendment.
We believe reproductive justice means the right to have children, not have children, and to raise families in safe, supported communities. It means affirming all people—across gender identities, experiences, and bodies—and building systems that protect both birth and abortion, parenting and bodily autonomy.
We are not a service provider with a heart. We are a movement with a strategy. And when our communities reclaim birth and reproductive autonomy, we reclaim the future.
Our Work in Numbers
In 2025 alone, Kansas Birth Justice Society is training 200 community-based doulas across the state, expanding access to culturally affirming care where it’s needed most. We’ve distributed thousands of dollars of free reproductive health and baby care supplies through Liberation Place, hosted over 50 community events and workshops, and reached thousands of voters through civic engagement efforts. From influencing state Medicaid policy to co-leading advocacy on maternal mortality reform, our impact is growing—and every number reflects lives touched, systems challenged, and communities strengthened.
Mutual aid reproductive health supplies distributed since 2022
$600K
doulas being trained this year
200
workshops and classes
50+
Individuals served since 2020
10,000+
Contact us
Need to get in touch?
For media inquiries, please call 316-500-0629