The U.S. Constitution and the California Constitution generally prohibit race-based programs from being subsidized by government entities. Yet the “University of California Berkeley supports a program called BElovedBIRTH Black Centering, which provides prenatal and postpartum care exclusively for black ‘birthing people’ with an all-black staff,” reports The College Fix. This seems to violate court rulings such as Connerly v. State Personnel Board (2001), which struck down racial set-asides as being unconstitutional even when provided for the benefit of historically disadvantaged groups.
Berkeley’s Wallace Center for Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health is partnerering with Highland Hospital of the Alameda Health System to support the BElovedBirth program.
“One of our driving values at the Wallace Center is birth equity, and that’s exactly what Beloved provides,” Wallace Center director Lindsay Parham declared. She added that Berkeley is “helping give them an arsenal of information to go out and increase the reach of the program.”
Alameda Health System says it imagines a world where “Black birthing people have all the support, loving care, and resources needed to have happy, healthy, and safe pregnancies, births, and postpartum recoveries; free from obstetric racism.” It claims that black “birthing people” disproportionately experience trauma and “complications in pregnancy and birth…caused by racism.”
As The College Fix explains, “The program provides midwifery care, doula support, childbirth education, and community group sessions for expecting mothers. It also offers ‘wrap-around’ support services through the Alameda County Public Health Department, including access to childcare resources, housing assistance, and nutrition support.”
In addition, “Beloved offers a paradigm shift by empowering Black women, birthing people, midwives, and the broader birth equity community to lead health system innovation and redefine perinatal care for the Black birth justice movement,” says the Wallace Center. “The founders of Beloved took an asset‐based approach and partnered with local community organizations and Black entrepreneurs to implement Beloved during the COVID‐19 pandemic,” it adds.
The College Fix notes that the “Wallace Center has also published data examining the program’s outcomes. According to a 2024 report, infants born to program participants were less likely to be born prematurely and more likely to have higher birth weight than infants born elsewhere in the Alameda County health system.”
A research paper published by UC Berkeley says the program’s childbirth education materials are “rooted in the Reproductive Justice, Birth Justice, Womanist theory, Intersectionality” and “’rest as reparations’ … frameworks.”
