The Abundant Birth Project, implemented in 2021, is designed to counter the obstetric racism that researchers say “leads a disproportionate number of African American People to die from childbirth, the project has provided 150 pregnant Black and Pacific Islander San Franciscans a $1,000 monthly stipend” (Cohen 2023). This project, though based in San Francisco, addresses a nationwide issue; U.S. systemic racism has put the lives of pregnant Black women in danger through the prevalence of prenatal medical malpractice in its healthcare system. Not only performed through methods of treatment, this malpractice also presents through lack of treatment provided in the disbelief or disregard of Black women’s pain, “slow or missed diagnoses are also a result of bias, structural racism in medicine and inattentive care that leads to patients, particularly Black women, not being heard” (Stafford 2023). The staggering statistics speak to the importance of efforts like the Abundant Birth Project, “Black women have the highest maternal mortality rate in the United States…almost three times the rate for white women” (Stafford 2023). 

However, the project is in danger, “Conservative groups have sued to shut down the Abundant Birth Project…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” (Cohen 2023). Despite claims of discrimination in the efforts to improve maternal outcomes for African American women, it fails to rebuke the centuries of discriminatory acts that have necessitated such efforts, “Discrimination and bias in hospital settings have been disastrous…The AP conducted dozens of interviews with doctors, medical professionals, advocates, and historians and researchers who detailed how a history of racism that begin during the foundational years of America led to disparities seen today” (Stafford 2023).

One of the conservative nonprofits suing the Abundant Birth Project claims its “violation of the equal protection clause” of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment by granting money exclusively to Black women, but again fails to acknowledge imperative historical context: “The 14th Amendment was passed after the Civil War to give rights to formerly enslaved Black people” (Cohen 2023).

The executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, Dan Morenoff, claims the Abundant Birth Project is “unconstitutional. They can’t legally do it, and we are optimistic that the courts will not allow them to continue to do it” (Cohen 2023). Seemingly unfamiliar with the prevalence in which the U.S. government has allowed the rights of Black women to be impeded upon, there is a failure to consider injustices of healthcare that have created the climate from which they present themselves today, as, “The advancement of obstetrics and gynecology had such an intimate relationship with slavery, and was literally built on the wounds of Black women” (Stafford 2023).

In providing how literary and historical contributions have shaped the ways these themes and discourses present themselves today in the necessitated implementation of and the controversy of The Abundant Birth Project, the contribution of these events in their perpetuation of the discrediting of Black women’s voices; the imposition of blame in their experience of discriminatory acts; the shaping and sustaining of systemic racism; and the implied lack of value and practiced disposability of Black mothers’ lives, the inability of this issue to be fully and effectively understood or addressed without attention to the historical and cultural contexts that shaped it become clear.

Work Cited: 

Cohen Ronnie. KFF Health News. “Backlash to Affirmative Action Hits Pioneering Maternal Health Program for Black Women.” The 19th, 23 Jan. 2024, 19thnews.org/2023/11/affirmative-action-backlash-maternal-health-program-black-women/. Accessed 01 May 2024.

Stafford, Kat. Press Associated “Why Do so Many Black Women Die in Pregnancy? One Reason: Doctors Don’t Take Them Seriously.” AP NEWS, 14 July 2021, projects.apnews.com/features/2023/from-birth-to-death/black-women-maternal-mortality-rate.html. Accessed 02 May 2024.