It’s widely known that low-income Black women suffer far higher maternal health risks than low- income white mothers, often because they lack access to quality health care. But in a new book, UC Berkeley law professor Khiara M. Bridges makes a forceful argument that maternal health disparities affect Black women at every rung of the socioeconomic ladder.
How can this be, when wealth presumably gives access to the best care money can buy? That question is at the heart of Bridges’ book, Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans (MIT Press, March 2026). Her answer is startling: A key cause is the racism that Black people commonly experience, literally from the moment they are conceived.
Khiara M. BridgesPhoto by Daniel P. Muller
Expecting Inequity begins in the neutral tone that is customary in scholarly writing, but a more passionate voice quickly emerges. Bridges raises an objection against a medical system and a society that seems indifferent to the risks faced by Black people during the profoundly human experience of childbearing.
She cites a 2019 report released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that Black people with less than a high school education are almost two times more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth or the postpartum period than their white peers. Meanwhile, college-educated Black people were more than five times more likely than their college-educated white peers to die from a pregnancy-related cause.
