Expecting Inequity - by Khiara Bridges (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From a leading expert on race, class, maternal health, and reproductive rights.

Racism in maternal healthcare is not reserved for the poor. An unsparing picture of inequities in prenatal care and childbirth in the United States, Expecting Inequity reveals that not only are black people three to four times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause, but racial disparities in maternal mortality persist across income levels. That is, wealthier black people are much more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period than their white counterparts. Focusing on a San Francisco obstetrics clinic that caters to the affluent, Khiara Bridges looks at the choices around prenatal care and childbirth that class-privileged, pregnant black people are making in order to survive what has been called the "black maternal health crisis."

Bridges, whose previous work exposed how race and racism are embedded in maternal healthcare for the poor, draws on two years of participant-observation to show how wealthier black people try to leverage their class privilege to avoid some of the negative effects of their blackness--only to discover that in a country that has never reckoned with its horrific racial past, there is no escaping racism's reach. Throughout the book, engaging, heartbreaking, infuriating stories of women's experiences with pregnancy and prenatal care illustrate how race and racism matter regardless of wealth or status.

Review Quotes

"With empathy, rigor, and keen legal insight, Bridges illuminates both the systemic forces behind the inequality in maternal health and the strategies black women create to protect themselves. Essential."
--Dorothy Roberts, author of Torn Apart and Killing the Black Body

"Stunning, enraging, and extremely necessary, Expecting Inequity is a love letter to black women and an urgent call to action for everybody."
--Paul Butler, MSNBC legal analyst; author of Chokehold: Policing Black Men

"A powerful indictment of systemic failure, Bridges's Expecting Inequity compels us to build a healthcare system where wealth no longer determines whose lives are protected."
--Uché Blackstock, MD, founder and CEO, Advancing Health Equity; New York Times best-selling author of Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine

"This must-read book will hold each of us accountable for what needs to happen to solve the black maternal health crisis."
--Michele Goodwin, author of Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood

About the Author