" In her new book, The Poverty of Privacy Rights, Boston University law professor Khiara M. Bridges tackles the wider phenomenon underlying “Jane Crow” practices. She argues that poor women in America simply do not have privacy rights. They do not have a choice but to let the government collect private information about their reproductive and sexual choices, and physically intrude into the private spaces where they raise their kids. CityLab spoke to Bridges recently about these intrusions imposed on women who need government assistance...
What this book does is it makes legal arguments about the nature of privacy rights in the present moment. It argues against the idea that that poor mothers have privacy before they actually accept the benefits, or that they will retain privacy—like wealthy women— if they don't take government benefits. That's just not the reality...
The physical space in which poor people live their lives are these neighborhoods that are heavily regulated—there’s a heavy police presence in these neighborhoods...
The other response I would have to that argument is if we really think that doing this survey of folks’ sexual history, history with intimate violence, mental illness, homelessness, job histories—if we really think that doing these surveys actually helps us protect children from abuse and neglect—then we wouldn't just reserve that for poor people. We would be asking these questions of everybody—rich or poor, man or woman. And yet, we have no law mandating that for wealthier people. We are ignoring children of more affluent folks."
I'm not thrilled with this term "Jane Crow", that's clearly just for media attention. It invites a lot of unhelpful comparisons and puts an awkward frame one these issues. I wish the author had just cone up with a new term.
FB: "Poor women would find themselves in this space seeking Medicaid or assisted prenatal care because they were really interested in having healthy pregnancies and giving birth to healthy children. But in exchange for that benefit, everything about their lives is opened up for surveillance. So they have to answer very intrusive questions about their sexual past, how they make their money, and who they're living with, and about their contact with regulated drugs or alcohol. I just can't imagine a privately insured woman, with some degree of class privilege, having to sit through this in exchange for her health care."
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