Fueled by what we perceived to be unfair, we decided to respond as we had in the past. We would create an exhibition and book of narratives, poetry, and photographs that would document the lives of both the babies and the women.

For the past ten years, we’ve used our art to effect change by educating both through the heart and the mind. In 1984, when Edwin Meese, our then-attorney general, said, “There is no hunger in America,” we responded with our first exhibition, Home Street Home, about homelessness. In 1987, with Struggle to Be Borne, we reacted to the thousands of pregnant women denied prenatal care. As we did with these two previous exhibitions and books, we would transport the stories of people not being heard or seen— this time, in the form of When the Bough Breaks: Pregnancy and the Legacy of Addiction—to places where they would be heard and seen: to public places, schools, universities, state capitols, and to the nation’s Capitol, in Washington, D.C.