A program that grants monthly payments to black “pregnant people” will soon expand across the state of California.
The San Francisco Department of Public Health partnered with Expecting Justice, a program from the University of California San Francisco, last summer to provide the “pregnant people” with $1,000 per month for one full year in the hopes of reducing purported racial health disparities stemming from childbirth. The program, which has aided as many as 150 residents of San Francisco, will expand next year to Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, and Riverside counties, where recipients can expect monthly stipends between $600 and $1,000.
“The Abundant Birth Project has proven to be successful in San Francisco and brings an innovative, equitable approach to addressing disproportionate health impacts largely among Black families, which is why I committed to investing $1.5 million over the next two years to grow the program in our City and neighboring counties,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed remarked in a press release. “This guaranteed income program helps ease some of the financial burdens that all too often keep mothers from being able to prioritize their own health and ultimately impact the health of their babies and family.”
Expanding the program through a $5 million grant from the California Department of Social Services will enable benefits for 425 more “pregnant people,” a term favored by Expecting Justice Director Zea Malawa. “For so long, Black women have been excluded from the resources needed to have safe and healthy pregnancies,” the University of California San Francisco visiting professor remarked. “This funding will provide pregnant people with economic stability during this critical phase in their lives while allowing public health institutions to test a novel and promising public health intervention.”
The San Francisco Department of Public Health claimed that black women are twice as likely as white women to have a preterm birth and experience “the highest infant and maternal mortality rates among any population” partially because of wealth and income disparities. The city launched a similar initiative that will provide $1,200 monthly checks for 18 months to 55 transgender residents in an effort to fight “poverty our most impacted community members face.”
The maternal health program comes after judges nixed a Department of Agriculture policy last year that excluded white farmers from receiving debt relief. Judge William Griesbach of Wisconsin ruled that the Biden officials’ decision to use “race-based criteria in the administration of the program violates their right to equal protection under the law.” A task force created by Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is now weighing a program that would grant each black resident as much as $223,000 as reparations for the country’s “painful legacy of racial injustice.”
Beyond the initiative meant to improve maternal health outcomes, the University of California San Francisco hosts multiple programs meant to train future abortionists, according to a report from The Daily Wire published last year. The school’s Fellowship in Family Planning, for instance, provides a two-year intensive complete with health insurance, loan repayment assistance, and a stipend so that participants can access “the opportunity to develop high-level research and clinical skills in contraception and abortion.” The program is offered at many of the nation’s most elite postsecondary institutions, including four of the eight Ivy League colleges.
The University of California San Francisco also made headlines last year after a pro-life group obtained research logs proving that researchers had harvested reproductive organs from preborn children for various experiments, according to Live Action.