Introduction The Gospel narrative of the hemorrhaging woman (Mark 5:25-34) has long been interpreted as a story of individual healing and faith. Yet when read through a womanist theological lens, her twelve-year struggle with medical exploitation and her clandestine act of self-healing reveals significant insights for contemporary reproductive justice discourse. This woman’s embodied resistance—knowing in her body that she is healed (v. 29) yet fearing discovery—represents what I term covert bodily reclamation through embodied knowledge. Her touch becomes a form of “silent sass,” a dangerous act of knowledge production that challenges medical authority and patriarchal control over women’s reproductive capacity. For Black women in 19th Century America, reproductive discourse was…

“I kept saying ‘I’m in pain, I’m in pain,’ but I was completely dismissed and fobbed off – no one looked at me,” recalled Tinuke Awe, a Black mother and campaigner, describing her near-death experience during childbirth in a Guardian article that sparked national concern.[1] Hers is not an isolated story. Black women in the UK are nearly three times more likely to die during childbirth than their white counterparts.[2] Behind this statistic are not just numbers, but stories of pain being ignored, symptoms dismissed, and trauma normalised. While public discourse treats this disparity as a health crisis, it is also a theological one. This article argues that the intersection…