By Jackie Jauregui
The decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is not the first time the American legal system has restricted reproductive rights and criminalized women for not carrying a pregnancy to term. Recent history precisely echoes the stories of Black women since slavery, law scholar Khiara M. Bridges recently told a UCSB audience.
“It’s like [they were] a canary in a coal mine,” she said.
Bridges is a professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, who focuses on the intersection of class, race, and reproductive rights. Her talk entitled “Race in the Roberts Court: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,” was the first of a three-part lecture series hosted by UCSB’s Walter H. Capps Center.
UC Berkeley law scholar Khiara M. Bridges during her talk, “Race in the Roberts Court: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,” at UC Santa Barbara’s Henley Hall.
The “Roberts Court” is the conservative-majority Supreme Court where John Roberts has served as chief justice since 2005. Recent decisions include Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, where the Court upheld a Mississippi law prohibiting the termination of a pregnancy after 15 weeks, effectively overturning Roe v. Wade, that had decriminalized abortion over five decades ago.
The Roberts Court, Bridges asserted, is selective about when it recognizes racism in cases. It will do so in instances of blatant racism, but doesn’t entertain the notion that there are systems within the country that maintain embedded discrimination, creating disparities and harming people of color.
“The Roberts Court treats racism as if it's an objective fact, out there in the world, kind of apparent to anybody who stumbles upon it,” she said. “So racism is eugenics. Racism is genocide. Racism is racists disarming formerly enslaved Black people to render them helpless and easily killed.”
The Dobbs v. Jackson decision disproportionately harms Black women, Bridges said. Black women have a higher rate of unintended pregnancy, and suffer more from the scarcity of geographically accessible healthcare, as well as having fewer financial resources to access effective contraceptives.
They are also more likely to experience intimate partner violence, according to Bridges.
“Black women are more likely than women of other races to be victims of rape during their lifetimes and they experience reproductive coercion at higher rates than white women,” she explained. “Reproductive coercion happens when a sexual partner actively tries to impregnate their partner against their wishes, pressures their partner not to use contraception, or interferes with condom usage.”
Legal Scholar Khiara M. Bridges speaks to UCSB students Lena Mitchell (center) and Zoe Crews (right) after the talk, “Race in the Roberts Court: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,” hosted by the Walter H. Capps Center.
Black women are at a disadvantage in preventing pregnancies, and also face significant challenges when pregnant. They experience higher rates of maternal mortality and morbidity — dying from a pregnancy-related threat or facing a life-threatening diagnosis that requires immediate medical attention.
“Black people are close to four times as likely to die from a pregnancy related cause, and are twice as likely as their white counterparts to suffer severe maternal morbidity,” Bridges said.
Whether a Black woman wants to prevent a pregnancy or carry to term she faces harm. Limiting access to abortion severely limits reproductive autonomy and overall health and life outcomes. In essence, says Bridges, the Dobbs decision is hurting Black women no matter what.
“We should consider how Dobbs has already influenced our national conversation about race and racism.”
Jackie Jauregui is a third-year Pre-Political Science and Spanish major at UC Santa Barbara. She is a Web and Social Media intern with the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.