Why a Program Designed to Help Black Pregnant Women Got Axed
They’re twisting the true purpose of the 14th Amendment
How does any group chip away at another group’s rights and opportunities? If history is any indication, it’s done little by little, like axing a tree piece by piece. At least, that’s the case when we consider the case of Black Americans. Over the past few years, conservatives have quietly leaned on the 14th Amendment to justify their goal of dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion programs throughout the country. Of course, the irony isn’t lost on historical scholars that the 14th Amendment sought to mitigate racism by extending “liberties and rights granted by the Bill of Rights to formerly enslaved people” during the Reconstruction Era. To put it another way, conservatives are weaponizing civil rights legislation designed to help newly freed Black Americans by depriving their descendants of access to equitable opportunities. This is what happens when you remove context.
For example, when conservative Supreme Court justices declared race-based affirmative action policies unconditional this year, they did so by arguing that a program designed to help Black students constituted preferential treatment that violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. While many believed this case would only impact students pursuing admittance into colleges and universities, the truth is that this affirmative action case opened the floodgates for conservatives to attack and dismantle programs designed to mitigate racism systematically. Want to help Black students receive equitable opportunities in academic admissions? They’ll call your efforts discriminatory against White and Asian students despite the numbers showing otherwise. Want to help Black mothers mitigate the systemic racism in the health care system? They’ll call that discriminatory, too, even though numerous studies demonstrate the harmful health impact of racism in Black maternal care.
When I say the floodgates are now open, what I mean is that we can expect to see conservative lawyers and politicians continue to use the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause as justification to dismantle programs designed to help marginalized groups. Want to apply for a scholarship that benefits only young women and girls? Or a program that helps Black men and boys fund startups. What about assisting Indigenous tribes or other ethnic groups? By their logic, all of these programs would be considered discriminatory, and I’m not sure that enough Americans are aware of what’s happening here. While federal legislation during the civil rights era established race, ethnicity, and sex as protected classes, they are now saying that any effort to mitigate the harm these groups experience is discriminatory. They’re criminalizing any resistance to racist, sexist, and homophobic systems.
The Abundant Birth Project
If you have ever wondered about the difference between equality and equity, the conservative effort to dismantle The Abundant Birth Project offers a pristine example. The rate of maternal mortality for Black women is more than twice the rate at which White women nationally. That is why The Abundant Birth Project offered special services to pregnant Black women to counter racial discrimination that impacts the care they receive. According to research, “While white women die from pregnancy-related causes at a rate of 13.4%, African American women die at a rate of 41.7%, like that of women in developing countries. American Indian and Alaska Native women follow with a mortality rate of 28.3%, according to the CDC.” Being Black is not what’s causing this disparity, racism is. As Crear-Perry, founder of National Birth Equity Collaborative, “race is not a factor for illness and death, but racism, bias, and discriminatory definitely are.” The Abundant Birth Project provided a stipend to Black and Pacific Islander expectant mothers in a pilot program, but a lawsuit has stopped their efforts entirely.
To understand why conservatives filed a lawsuit to axe the program, let’s return to our discussion of equality vs. equity. Given what you now know about the racial disparities in maternal health care, if we were to treat White pregnant women equally to Black pregnant women by offering no additional resources to address the racism Black women experienced, we would maintain this deadly status quo. What Black women need is equitable access to maternal health care because if equality means ignoring inequities and treating everyone the same despite any information that indicates some people need additional resources, then equality falls painfully short. All women and pregnant people should have access to maternal care, but the truth of the matter is Black, Indigenous, and Pacific Islander women face a higher rate of maternal mortality, and ignoring that, despite the plethora of scientific studies proving these disparities exist is a clear cut case of misogynoir, a toxic blend of racism and sexism.
When Supreme Court justices banned affirmative action policies, they not only blocked a program designed to help Black students receive equitable educational opportunities, but they also laid the legal groundwork to dismiss any diversity, equity, or inclusion program as discriminatory, as we’ve seen in the case of The Abundant Birth Project. This may also impact any scholarships designed to aid Black or Latino students or those from another racial minority group. How are they legally getting away with this? Conservatives are intentionally conflating positive and negative discrimination. There is a big difference between a program singling out a group to ensure they receive equitable opportunities or access to care and a program singling out a group to prevent them from receiving equitable opportunities or access to care. That’s like saying a law banning a Black man from drinking from a whites-only water fountain is the same as one designed to ensure he has equitable access to water. It’s an intellectually dishonest argument, but it’s been exceedingly effective.
The Abundant Birth Project was designed to mitigate the racism that makes pregnancy significantly more dangerous for Black women by ensuring they have access to quality, compassionate care. But conservatives axed the program as if it were designed to cause harm or discriminate against other racial groups, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth. The racism pregnant Black women experience in the healthcare system is well-documented. Still, those vying to destroy equity programs pretend not to see the big white elephant in the room. To add insult to injury, they’re using the 14th Amendment to meet their objectives, depriving Black Americans of equity while claiming they’re doing so for the sake of equality.
This anti-civil rights campaign is chipping away at Black Americans’ voting rights and their access to education, healthcare, and housing, piece by piece. Social change doesn’t happen in one grand move but slowly and methodically, so Americans should pay attention. Understanding this pattern is the best first step to countering their efforts, to create a society that embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion and sees equality as the floor and not the ceiling. Unfortunately, in the meantime, we must prepare for more attacks on Black Americans’ rights and opportunities under the guise of equality, like a wolf wearing sheep’s clothing.
Originally published November 26, 2023, on Writers and Editors of Color
🌹You can learn more about the author here and subscribe to the newsletter, For Black Women.
I watched a video of a teacher demonstrating the difference between equality and equity for her young students by using three Band-Aids.
She asked one student to pretend he scraped his knee. She handed him a band-aid and placed it on his knee. I hope you're okay now.
She asked a second student to pretend she got a scratch on her arm. Then. she placed a band-aid on her knee. I hope you're okay now.
She asked the third student to pretend she bumped her head. She placed a band-aid on her knee. I hope you're okay now.
She asked them if they now understood that each student was treated equally but that was not what they needed. Equity is what they needed - the proper treatment for the injury sustained.
They use the Constitution like they use the Bible. They've never read the entire text of either, it seems, but they can cherry-pick the right material to use entirely out of context for media soundbites to support their aims.