For Briana Jones, a young Black mother in San Francisco, a city program called the Abundant Birth Project has been a godsend.
Designed to counter the “obstetric racism” that researchers say leads a disproportionate number of African American mothers to die from childbirth, the project has provided 150 pregnant Black and Pacific Islander San Franciscans a $1,000 monthly stipend.
The money enabled Jones, 20, to pay for gas to drive to prenatal clinics, buy fresh fruits and vegetables for her toddler son and herself, and remain healthy as she prepared for the birth of her second child last year.
But the future of the Abundant Birth Project is clouded by a lawsuit alleging that the program, the first of its kind in the nation, illegally discriminates by giving the stipend only to people of a specific race. The lawsuit also targets San Francisco guaranteed-income programs serving artists, transgender people, and Black young adults.
The litigation is part of a growing national effort by conservative groups to eliminate racial preferences in a wide range of institutions following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found race-conscious admissions to colleges and universities to be unconstitutional.
In health care, legal actions threaten efforts to provide scholarships to minority medical school students and other initiatives to create a physician workforce that looks more like the nation.
The lawsuits also endanger other measures designed to reduce well-documented racial disparities. Black women are three to four times more likely than white women to die in labor or from related complications in the U.S., and Black infants are twice as likely as white infants to be born prematurely and to die before their first birthdays. Racial and ethnic minorities also are more likely to die from diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, and heart disease than their white counterparts, according to the Cent …
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For Briana Jones, a young Black mother in San Francisco, a city program called the Abundant Birth Project has been a godsend.
Designed to counter the “obstetric racism” that researchers say leads a disproportionate number of African American mothers to die from childbirth, the project has provided 150 pregnant Black and Pacific Islander San Franciscans a $1,000 monthly stipend.
The money enabled Jones, 20, to pay for gas to drive to prenatal clinics, buy fresh fruits and vegetables for her toddler son and herself, and remain healthy as she prepared for the birth of her second child last year.
But the future of the Abundant Birth Project is clouded by a lawsuit alleging that the program, the first of its kind in the nation, illegally discriminates by giving the stipend only to people of a specific race. The lawsuit also targets San Francisco guaranteed-income programs serving artists, transgender people, and Black young adults.
The litigation is part of a growing national effort by conservative groups to eliminate racial preferences in a wide range of institutions following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found race-conscious admissions to colleges and universities to be unconstitutional.
In health care, legal actions threaten efforts to provide scholarships to minority medical school students and other initiatives to create a physician workforce that looks more like the nation.
The lawsuits also endanger other measures designed to reduce well-documented racial disparities. Black women are three to four times more likely than white women to die in labor or from related complications in the U.S., and Black infants are twice as likely as white infants to be born prematurely and to die before their first birthdays. Racial and ethnic minorities also are more likely to die from diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, and heart disease than their white counterparts, according to the Cent …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]