Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay - Dr. Khiara Bridges and the Abundant Birth Project Lawsuit

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay are joined by law professor Khiara Bridges to discuss conservative backlash to a San Francisco maternal health program for Black women. Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay Guests: Dr. Khiara Bridges Producers: Donnie Beacham Jr. and Ashleigh Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tool. Restrictions apply. See terms at Fandul.com slash predict slash bonus dash offer dash terms. Okay, guys, very serious and outrageous issue happening right now. The Abundit Birth Project is a San Francisco program designed to counter obstetric racism that researchers say leads to disproportionate numbers of African-American mothers to die from childbirth. We've talked about this here on higher learning, black maternal mortality, and the issues surrounding black pregnant people,

both postpartum and while they are going through their labor. This project seems to be a godsend to me to provide over 150 pregnant and black Pacific Islanders in San Francisco $1,000 a month so that they can live and get the care that they need, but is now clouded by a lawsuit,

alleging that the program, the first of its kind in the nation, it legally discriminates by giving the stipend only to people of a specific race. It also targets the San Francisco Guaranteed Income Program serving artists, transgender people,

and black young adults. We have somebody a brilliant, brilliant voice joining us today to discuss this and discuss the problems, the inherent racism, and the challenging of this, and how we deal.

with issues like this if we're not allowed to directly address them. That woman's name is Kiara Bridges, Dr. Kiara Bridges. Let me give this sister her props on here. She's a law professor at UC Berkeley, the UC Berkeley School of Law, specializing in the intersectionality of race, reproductive issues, reproductive justice, should I say, and law. She's written a plethora of things, including reproductive, reproducing race, the ethnography, ooh, of pregnancy as a,

site of radicalization. The poverty of privacy rights. Oh, critical race theory, a primer. Oh, my God. They love her on the right. Also a dancer and a trained ballet person who performs with

ballet in so many different things. Kiar, thank you for joining us in the show today. Thanks for having me. And thanks for providing a platform for folks to listen to and engage with really important issues. Okay. I'm going to use my humanist brain right now.

When I look at the abundant birth project, I see an inherent good. I see people who are tackling an issue and trying to bring substantive change to something that we all agree, people that have looked at the numbers, is a problem. Why would anyone want to stop that?

Why would anybody want to save lives? I don't know. You know, the Republican Party has for a long time been hostile to race conscious interventions. You know, there's a significant portion of the Republican Party that denies that racism persists, that, you know, they claim that we overcame in the 1960s. You know, we passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Obama was elected in 2008 and racism is a thing of the past. And so consistent with that view, is this position that, you know, race-conscious interventions into social problems are, in fact, the problem.

And so the abundant birth program, which is a race-conscious intervention into the fact of racial disparities in maternal mortality and morbidity, is conceptualized as racism, as the problem that, you know, according to their legal theories, the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbid. And you explain obstetric racism. Yeah, obstetric racism is a concept that has been put forth by, you know, a variety of sociologists and anthropologists and lawyers. And the idea is that racism doesn't stop when you enter into the delivery room. You know, racism, you know, racism is ubiquitous. It's everywhere. and it's also present. And when you're laboring and delivering and recovering from having given birth.

And so obstetric racism is a concept that attempts to capture just the disparate treatment that black and other non-white people experience in labor and delivery room. So the disparate treatment, meaning we're not listened to. Our pain is denied. Our humanity is denied. We're treated like animals. of, you know, breeders. And so our interest in privacy and autonomy and agency is just disregarded.

And so the abundant birth program attributes some portion of racial disparities in maternal mortality and morbidity to obstetric racism. And so it's designed to intervene in those processes and save lives in the process. There are going to be people that are going to be listening to this and they are going to say, how in the world could people be racist against human beings in the very act of life-given? Like, how could that be a thing? In your question, in your opinion, why does this type of racism exist and why is it so prevalent? I mean, racism is a dehumanizing narrative, right?

And it's more than a narrative. It's also, you know, has material consequences. And, you know, part of the reason that I actually got interested in the law around reproduction was that I observed, like, this is early, like back in law school. Like, I observed how pregnancy and birth and childbearing and mothering were talked about in law. And also, you know, in literature and, you know, other places. And it was sort of talked about as like a good thing, you know, for the pregnant person, for the pregnant person's family, for the country, for the nation, for the world. But then like on the ground, you know, I was going to law school sort of as we emerged from this, you know, political period when like the welfare queen was, was, you know, ubiquitous and demonized and kind of leveraged in order to, you know, get political sentiments against, you know, big government and like giving benefits to low income people just to help them, you know, get food, clothing, shelter, you know, and health care, basic necessities. And so I was. was really struck by the difference between the way pregnancy and mothering and childbirth

and was talked to, you know, were talked about in the literature and law and the way that people like really disparaged actual pregnant and birthing people and mother, you know, mothers on the ground. And the thing that explains the disparity was race and class. Like, you know, when you have race and class privilege in this country, your reproduction tends to be celebrated. But when you lack both of those things, when you are non-white and when you're poor and when you're trying to, you know, engage in what should be a celebrate, an amazing process of like bringing life into this world, you're denigrated. You're conceptualized as a social problem as like the mother of our future welfare queens, the mother of our future super predators, you know, the problem.

So yes, absolutely, that will carry over into the labor and delivery room. And the focus who are charged to care for you during that process will treat you as a social problem and that's what obstetric racism endeavors to capture. So I'm to believe then that the animus towards black people towards others in this country

exists on such a primal level that the idea of more of us angers, power establishments, and they then treat pregnant people like shit. I think that's an accurate way to capture it. Absolutely. When black folks are given birth, they're not conceptualized as people who are doing a good thing.

They're conceptualized as people who are irresponsible, people who made a mistake. And now the society has to bear the financial, and social costs of that mistake. So absolutely. I think that captures what the abundant birth program is designed to at least begin to intervene in. For adults with Crohn's disease

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Tramphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tramfaya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Tramphiaraio.com. This episode is brought to you by Sweet Green. The day doesn't ask for permission. Lunch window? Gone before you saw it coming. You deserve a break that actually satisfies. Sweet Green's new wraps have got you.

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They got out of Georgia where it benefited black and brown people. And now we're seeing it with the abundant birth project. From this, looking at this lawsuit, do you think that as it stands, the abundant birth project? is it, do you think that it could be challenged and found to be illegal under the law? No. So, you know, we have a generation of hostile precedent for race-conscious interventions. There's nothing, you know, a lot of folks like to think about our present Supreme Court as like the beginning of, like, bad law. But the reality is that we've had bad law coming at the Supreme Court at least, you know, since the 1970s.

So there is a whole bunch of hostile precedent that suggests the illegality or the unconstitutionality of race-conscious programs. However, there's also precedent kind of creating exceptions to the unconstitutionality or illegality of race-conscious interventions. And so the abundant birth program and, you know, sort of my reading of the case law of the cases that the Supreme Court has handed down fits within one of those narrow exceptions, right? The abundant birth program is a targeted intervention into a phenomenon that we all know exists. Nobody can deny that black people are dying at three to four times the rate of white people during, you know, from pregnancy-related causes. And the same is true in California. Our numbers are a little different, but racial disparities and maternal mortality and morbidity exist in California, you know, one of the bluest of the blue states. And so this is an intervention designed to save Black and Pacific Islander lives.

It is doing it by providing essentially a guaranteed income so that people don't have to, you know, work these low-wage jobs that prevent them from being able to care for them to rest, right? providing them with an income that allows them to get the food that they need, do not worry about housing insecurity for at least nine months of their pregnancy. And so again, this is a targeted intervention designed to address a phenomenon that exists in California. And again, in my reading of the case law, my reading of the precedents, that should be able to survive the scrutiny that federal courts have been commended to give. to race-conscious programs. So without getting into the whole legality of it, strict scrutiny,

that's the name of the level of review that federal courts should be using on programs that employ a racial classification. And strict scrutiny, they say it is fatal, in fact. It's strict in scrutiny, but fatal in fact. But there are many, many examples of programs that have survived strict scrutiny. And, you know, again, I think Abundant Birth Project

is one of those that should be. to survive. It may be able to survive the law, but can it survive the politics? Because this issue might very well be viewed as a purely political one, particularly as we're starting to see more activist judges all over, not just set the Supreme Court level, but all over the federal courts. Can it survive the politics? And if it's a political issue, how do we fight it using politics? Yeah, no, I mean, I think that it can survive the legal challenge. I also think that it can survive the politics, but it has to be in a place that is politically, you know, amenable to programs like this. And San Francisco is certainly one of those places. California is one of those places. You know, I could name a couple of other blue places, you know, across the U.S. where programs like these might survive. You know, will it survive in Florida where I'm from? Probably not. you know, will it be politically tenable in Texas and, you know, Louisiana, Missouri? You know, probably not. And that's the, that's the tragedy of politics, you know, in the U.S. is that, you know, your ability to survive as a black person, you know, your ability to survive pregnancy may be contingent, like on the state that you're born in, on the city that you happen to reside in. And, you know, last I checked, the Constitution says, about equal protection of the laws.

So that's just to me that everywhere we live, you know, in this country, we ought to have an equal chance or surviving. But, you know, our Supreme Court, like I said, has been handed now hostile precedent, really bad law since at least in 1970s when it comes to race. And so we're stuck, right, with what we have right now. And that is if you're in California, you're more likely to survive your pregnancy than if you're in Mississippi or if you're in, you know, Louisiana. And that's a tragedy.

The politics of it is so important, especially as we're stepping into 2024. And we're seeing that these type of challenges, not just with black maternal health and that crisis, which we've talked about in this podcast before, but in other areas as well, where people feel like minorities are getting preferential treatment. What can we do? Because you talk about California's, you know, the laws are here different in one state versus or the politics. are different in one state versus what they are in Texas. You know, Texas is on the forefront right now with a huge abortion case. Yeah, right now. What is it that we can do to, you know, within our own states, to support the black maternal health crisis or any other area that's being challenged to benefit minorities?

Yeah. I mean, I guess I am like a hopeless optimist when it comes to just like facts. Like, I think that the facts are just so damning in this country. Like, you know, just the facts of the statistics, you know, the numbers that describe racial inequality are just like so horrifying in a country that has this document that says something about equal protection of the laws. So, you know, I've always felt like more people need to know, you know, what we are dealing with, you know, in this country.

and they need to be disabused of like the stories that we tell to naturalize and legitimate, you know, what we're dealing with. So just as a very practical example, you know, the U.S., when it comes to, you know, jails and prisons and detention centers, right, we incarcerate more people than any other country in the world, right? Both per capita, right, ratios as well as just like the sheer number. We have more than 2 million people in jails and prisons and detention centers right now. Of those folks, right, black people make up 13% of the population generally. They represent over a third of the people in jails and prisons today, right? So make it make sense, right? Why is it that black people are 13% of the population, but 33% of the people in jails and prisons today?

Some folks, right, the narrative that we tell to legitimate and naturalize that is something about, oh, black people just commit more crime, right? Or, oh, you know, black people have like some natural, you know, tendency. There's a cultural commitment to crime. Absolutely, you know, which is lazy. We don't like to work. You know, we are promiscuous. We like guns.

You know, like there's like, there's like a cultural tendency towards crime. But I also, I feel like in order to battle those narratives that naturalize, like what is just like unexcusable inequality is to explain like the, the role of that poverty, right? Like the poverty that we have produced in the nation, like how that contributes to, you know, higher rates of lawbreaking. Our commitment to not invest in the programs that we know will lead folks to lives that do not involve breaking laws

that are designed to, you know, regulate and protect, you know, folks in communities. So anyway, this, the long, that's the short of the story is, I feel like if we just elevate the facts, right? The facts of racial disparities in incarceration rates. The facts of racial disparities in maternal mortality. The wealth gap between, you know, black and, you know, white families.

If we just elevate these facts, more people will know about them and more people will perhaps, right? As long as they're not being fed these lies from a white, right-wing media ecosystem, more folks might be a little more politically amenable to, you know, supporting the programs designed to address these inequities that, again, are just like inexcusable in a country that has a document that says something about eco-protection of the laws. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, Reliable Internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business. They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services,

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I'm not smart and I realize. Okay. And so that helps. Okay. I watch simple movies, Marvel movies. You know, there's a bad guy, bad lady who wants to do something bad. They're clearly bad. And then there's this other group that are clearly good, maybe a little bit morally, whatever, but they're clearly on the right side. And then at the end, they went. Okay. All right. No matter what happens. I feel like what we have or our problem in America is not. not identifying the good guys because, you know, who's good. But it really is identifying the bad guys. Like in this case right here, who wants to stop specifically the entities, who wants to stop black pregnant women from getting money that they need so that they don't

die during childbirth? When affirmative action was struck down, we were able to make a national villain out of Edward Blum, not as big as he should be, but in this case, if we're pointing to the entities that are the bad guys here, if names, faces, organizations, who are

they? You know, that's, it's a good question. And I wish, I wish that it was as simple as that as just pointing to, you know, the guy behind the curtain. But a lot of this is funded with dark money, right?

Like, these are well-funded efforts. And so we don't know, you know, who is actually, you know, bankrolling all of this. This litigation is expensive. We don't know. And there are also, you know, conservative think tanks that are dreaming up these legal theories. So it's a network of thinkers, billionaires, you know, well-funded entities that are, you know, challenging these discrete, you know, policies and programs. and interventions with the hope of creating a country that looks like what they wanted to look like.

And that is one in which we kind of ignore racial inequality. We attribute, you know, racial injustice to the non-white folks who have to live it every day, where we have jails and prisons, the warehouse, you know, folks where people died during pregnancy and we sort of attribute it to like, oh, they must have had a bad gene. Black folks just have these bad genes that cause it will bleed out, you know, have to give them birth. You know, so that's that's the end goal. And it's, and it's not just one, you know, Ed Bloom is just, you know, one of many people, like like-minded people. It's a, it's a, it's a movement. And so we need to just acknowledge that movement exists and then fight back with, you know, politics, but also fight back with smart legal theories and, you know, folks that are on the right side of history here. I'm trying to just save Black lives, save, you know, Pacific Islander lives, save. non-white lives. Kara, oh, you got one more?

Well, no, it's okay. Go ahead. Do you have another question? Well, I was just going to say, why is it so hard for the other side to counter this? It's the same thing that happened with the Dobbs decision. We knew for years, decades that they were trying to get to the point where we are today in 2023. Why is it that they can have this synchronized movement, this concerted effort, money behind it, voices behind it, but yet we know it's there. We know it's a problem. It inferior,

it infuriates us yet we don't do anything to count. I mean, so don't get me started on Dodd. Like, you know, like you said, like when Roe came out in 1973, the right was very clear. We are going to reverse this thing, you know, by hook or crook. And so the Democrats had since 1973 to codify, you know, the law of Roe. Essentially, we could have passed federal legislation, we could have had a statutory rights to an abortion. And so Dobbs comes out and we're like, oh my God, but a tragedy, it's like a tragedy that was five years in the making. So, you know, same thing with affirmative action, you know, since, you know, take, go back to like Baki is, you know, this famous Supreme Court case in the 1970s where the Supreme Court was like, we're real hostile

towards this stuff. We actually don't think that race conscious interventions into this stuff is like, you know, palatable. Democrats had a, you know, at least, you know, a half a century to codify a right, to amend the constitutional, right, to just like, you know, engage in efforts to thwart what ultimately became students for fair emission versus Harvard and UNC in which the court, you sense, for all intents and purposes, makes, you know, race-conscious emissions, you know, unconstitutional. So why, what explains that? Oh, man, I wish I knew, right?

I wish that my PhD was in political science, right? And not an apology because then maybe it'll make, it'll help me understand why Democrats have always been so reactive and never proactive. The GOP is very proactive. You know, I have to give it up sometimes. Like, their creativity is wild. You know, they think outside of the box. They are very, like, organized and in, like you said, you know, in lockstep,

like they're pursuing these programs. And part of it, you know, when I, when I want to think kind of. finally on the Democratic Party. I think it's because the Democratic Party just is more heterogeneous, right? Perhaps, you know, the folks who the Democrats purport to represent might just be more heterogeneous, right? We might be more racially diverse. We might be more diverse in terms of socioeconomic status.

We might be more heterogeneous in terms of immigration status, right? So there might just be a whole lot of heterogeneity amongst the population that, you know, the Democratic Party purports to represent and less heterogeneity amongst those who, you know, who the Republican Party purports to represent. And also the folks who the Republican Party purports to represent all the, you know, vote against their interests all the time. It makes no sense for, you know, poor white people to be voting for a party that really doesn't care about poor people at all,

about people who are not like hashtag winning within capitalism. So all of that to say, girl, I don't know. Well, I'll tell you what I don't know. I don't know what heterogeneity means. So they're the difference. So that's, remember, this is Marvel movie break. I'll tell you one thing now. I think that's what we can do here on higher learning is we can dig and dig and dig and try to identify the villains.

So give people specific people to be maddened. Leonard Leo, you're up first. And Chris Rufo up next, you know, like... Chris Rufo. Absolutely. I mean, we have some villains for sure. You know, Mitch McConnell, you know, he's... Mitch McConnell, all you guys.

He's slinkering. You know, he's on the out. But, you know, he made the federal judiciary what it is right now, which is like, you know, incredibly conservative. So there are definitely villains out there. But then there's also, you know, the folks behind the curtain who we never see. Never see. But they're the one too who are really, yeah, making all of them.

Funding it. Yeah. Dr. Kiar Bridges, thank you for expanding our minds, expanding our vocabularies and talking with us about this. We appreciate you on higher learning. We hope to have you back. Yeah, thanks for having me, you guys. Take care.