The Poverty of Privacy Rights makes a simple, controversial argument:
Poor mothers in America have been deprived of the right to privacy.
The U.S. Constitution is supposed to bestow rights equally. Yet the poor
are subject to invasions of privacy that can be perceived as gross
demonstrations of governmental power without limits. Courts have
routinely upheld the constitutionality of privacy invasions on the poor,
and legal scholars typically understand marginalized populations to have
"weak versions" of the privacy rights everyone else enjoys. Khiara M.
Bridges investigates poor mothers' experiences with the state--both when
they receive public assistance and when they do not. Presenting a
holistic view of just how the state intervenes in all facets of poor
mothers' privacy, Bridges shows how the Constitution has not been
interpreted to bestow these women with family, informational, and
reproductive privacy rights. Bridges seeks to turn popular thinking on
its head: Poor mothers' lack of privacy is not a function of their
reliance on government assistance--rather it is a function of their not
bearing any privacy rights in the first place. Until we disrupt the
cultural narratives that equate poverty with immorality, poor mothers
will continue to be denied this right.
