Sacred Care at the Border: Midwives Helping Pregnant Migrants Navigate Birth and Loss

Every year, hundreds of pregnant migrants’ journey through Mexico toward the United States. Along the way, they face violence, discrimination, language barriers, and limited access to professional health care. Even with the support of secular humanitarian organizations — many providing essential shelter, medical referrals, and basic relief — gaps remain. These efforts save lives, but they often cannot address the deeply layered emotional, spiritual, and cultural needs experienced by women navigating pregnancy, trauma, and profound uncertainty.

In Tijuana, a different kind of response has taken root.

Since 2016, Partería y Medicina Tradicional (Midwifery and Traditional Medicine) has created a sanctuary for pregnant migrants grounded in both public health and ancestral Indigenous knowledge. Their midwives provide comprehensive care, offering check-ups in shelters and at their center, distributing prenatal vitamins and needed medications, and accompanying women to medical appointments and ultrasounds. They help mothers overcome barriers like language, medical mistrust, and fear of discrimination.

But their work goes further into the realms of grief, resilience, and spirit.

For women who have faced sexual violence, those who have traveled for weeks under harsh conditions, and those who have experienced miscarriage or the death of a newborn along the route, the midwives offer emotional and spiritual accompaniment. Through plant-based medicine, postpartum rituals, and traditional practices passed down through generations, they honor both pregnancy and loss as experiences that happen to the body and the soul.

The organization also leads community workshops, often in partnership with migrant-serving groups, to help women understand their reproductive health, reclaim autonomy, and build networks of support.

One of their most powerful expressions of care happens at the ocean’s edge. On a nearby beach, midwives gather to pray for migrating women and their children. These ceremonies honor those in transit and those lost. They also strengthen the midwives themselves, sustaining their capacity to continue this demanding and sacred work.

In their philosophy, birth is inherently spiritual: a moment where life emerges in the presence of death, and where both are treated with reverence. Through this lens, the midwives of Partería y Medicina Tradicional bring healing that is practical, embodied, emotional, and deeply rooted in Mexican tradition.

This film shares their voice, their wisdom, and their calling: to care for women on one of the most difficult journeys of their lives, with a blend of skill, compassion, and sacred practice that meets needs far beyond the physical.