Paying Pregnant Women Ignores What's Killing Their Babies

WASHINGTON - Dec. 14, 2022 - PRLog -- California is expanding a $5 million dollar program which pays Black mothers and "other birthing parents" $1000 a month to "reduce the racial birth disparities by easing economic stress."

But the program ignores a major cause of racial birth disparities - that care by White doctors is killing Black babies - which could be attacked far more effectively with hard hitting legal action than by giving money to women who are unlikely to be able to spend it in ways designed to save babies' lives, says pubic interest law professor John Banzhaf.

While it's long been known that Black babies are much more likely to die shortly after birth than White ones  - in some studies by a 2-to-1 ratio -  a new study, published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests one startling explanation.

It found that Black babies are nearly three times more likely to die if cared for by White specialists than by Black ones - not because Black babies compared with White babies are inherently less healthy, or more prone to various diseases, receive different parental care, or for similar reasons.

So, while it may be very difficult if not impossible to prove in individual cases how a White physician was negligent in providing less effective life-saving care to a Black infant than a Black doctor would have provided, it may be possible to bring a class action against a major hospital for negligence in failing to investigate and then correct this huge disparity, says Banzhaf, who has been called a "King of Class Action Lawsuits."

Often, says Banzhaf, "Suing the Bastards" is far more effective than simply throwing money at a problem with little hope, much less assurances, that it will actually help to solve the underlying and long-lasting causes of a problem.

It's not just shocking but absolutely unacceptable that the race of a physician alone can triple the number of black children who die shortly after birth and, like the significantly higher death rate among Black adults as compared with their White counterparts, it should be a call for action - perhaps hard hitting legal action, he suggests.

http://banzhaf.net/   jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com   @profbanzhaf