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I see a lot of people sharing this thread and while I understand what it's trying to do, it's not quite accurate. Abortion bans in the US (and around the world) are racist. For people of color to have abortions is not racist. We deserve the right to freely decide our families. https://twitter.com/TravelingNun/status/1274738762845732866
The majority of people who have abortions are people of color. To ignore that is to ignore our autonomy. A majority of people have abortions because they don't have enough money for another child but also they're already parenting and don't want to grow their families right then.
Yes, white women have excluded women (cis and trans) of color from so many movements, not just abortion. Read @freeblackgirl's book Lifting As We Climb to understand how all your favorite suffragettes said the most disgusting things about Black women. https://twitter.com/TravelingNun/status/1274738770198384641?s=20
This is where this thread could use a reproductive justice lens. People of color have always wanted abortion access, and the ability to raise children free from harm. We don't truly have the choice to do either. Damned if we do, damned if we don't. https://twitter.com/TravelingNun/status/1274738775810355201?s=20
Again, this is not factually accurate. Abortion was around long before Margaret Sanger. In fact, Margaret Sanger didn't even like abortion; she had the same stance on abortion that Ben Carson did when he was running for president. http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/9/dr-ben-carsons-tall-tales-about-abortion-and-black-women.html https://twitter.com/TravelingNun/status/1274738776997322755?s=20
Abortion has been around for thousands of years—it was used during slavery to keep enslaved women from having to see their children grow as property of men who raped them. They also chose it in ancient times via herbs and fruits like pomegranate seeds. https://www.salon.com/test/2014/02/25/whitewashing_reproductive_rights_how_black_activists_get_erased/
People have always wanted to control their fertility. Ignoring that we've had abortions well before Margaret Sanger is an insult—we made decisions long before she walked this planet and long after. Margaret Sanger did not invent abortion nor did she bring it to Black people.
I honestly think that's a colonialist mindset to assume that Black people didn't know anything about abortion or contraception before she showed up. Yes, she played a eugenicist role in making sure poor people had birth control and she wasn't the only one.
Sanger was a birth control advocate and like most white women of her day (hey Susan B. Anthony!) and some Black folks (WEB DuBois) believed that controlling the poor Black folks through reproduction would help their social uplift. Many still think that today and fund it globally.
Like most white women of her day (and today!), she was messy. Susan B. Anthony & Elizabeth Cady Stanton are held up as anti-abortion heroes, yet folks forget the way they flipped from slavery abolition to stop Black men from getting the vote before them. https://twitter.com/TravelingNun/status/1274738779300016128?s=20
It is absolutely true that contraception, like so many other medications were experimented on Black and Brown women because white men like Gregory Pincus and Clarence Gamble of Procter & Gamble were eugenicists who preyed on poor folks with little power. https://twitter.com/TravelingNun/status/1274738778209484801?s=20
I do wish, however, that instead of picking one figure in history to focus on—for the sole purpose of demonizing Planned Parenthood—we'd address that this was a systemic belief that impacted all healthcare, and was devastating to reproductive health of Black and Brown folks.
The refusal to treat and subsequently exploit Black women in Baltimore like Henrietta Lacks or the Tuskegee experimentation on Black women were reproductive violence. Our medical history is full of it, and we must discuss these histories in full, elevating those who were harmed.
Abortion didn't begin and end with white women. Folks of color have been having abortions for thousands of years using herbs. There are many reasons for having abortions—and most people choose multiple reasons at a time. It's time people actually centered us in our history.
The entire profession of gynecology was created through racist practices—read up on J. Marion Sims and how he treated Betsey, Anarcha, and Lucy, and hundreds of other enslaved Black women so that he could treat white women. https://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=513764158:554043118
This is absolutely true—we must acknowledge the history of it, and that's what reproductive justice does. But it does it by centering people of color and our lives, rather than a haphazard analysis centered on a problematic white woman. https://twitter.com/TravelingNun/status/1274738781824987138?s=20
I get that this thread is trying to educate people, particularly by using the abortion is racist rhetoric, but it needs more context. White women have always been racist and put their own needs above folks of color. Read up on this so we don't continue to repeat it.
Reproductive justice also demands that we look at the racist history of reproduction in general, which lives on to this day, and how racism is embedded in adoption, parenting, and the removal of children of color from their homes. Racism is central to all of this history.
I also encourage people who want to learn about reproductive justice, as @TravelingNun suggests, to read the founders of reproductive justice in their own words—some of whom have had abortions.
https://bookshop.org/books/reproductive-justice-volume-1-an-introduction/9780520288201
https://bookshop.org/books/radical-reproductive-justice-foundation-theory-practice-critique/9781558614376 https://twitter.com/TravelingNun/status/1275052237002326017?s=20
https://bookshop.org/books/reproductive-justice-volume-1-an-introduction/9780520288201
https://bookshop.org/books/radical-reproductive-justice-foundation-theory-practice-critique/9781558614376 https://twitter.com/TravelingNun/status/1275052237002326017?s=20
Read Dorothy Roberts' book Killing the Black Body which centers Black folks and our reproduction through out the past 400 years—before Margaret Sanger existed. It gave me a framework for the policies of today that are based in a long racist history. https://bookshop.org/books/killing-the-black-body-race-reproduction-and-the-meaning-of-liberty/9780679758693
Read Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice. It has so many essays about the history of reproductive justice and what we're organizing toward. https://bookshop.org/books/undivided-rights-women-of-color-organizing-for-reproductive-justice/9781608466177
Read @haw95's Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
https://bookshop.org/books/medical-apartheid-the-dark-history-of-medical-experimentation-on-black-americans-from-colonial-times-to-the-present/9780767915472
Read @michelebgoodwin's
Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood https://bookshop.org/books/policing-the-womb-invisible-women-and-the-criminalization-of-motherhood/9781107030176
https://bookshop.org/books/medical-apartheid-the-dark-history-of-medical-experimentation-on-black-americans-from-colonial-times-to-the-present/9780767915472
Read @michelebgoodwin's
Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood https://bookshop.org/books/policing-the-womb-invisible-women-and-the-criminalization-of-motherhood/9781107030176
Out right now is @Dianagfoster's book The Turnaway Study where she researched folks who were and were not able to get abortions and what happened to them. It features the stories of WoC who've had abortions. https://bookshop.org/books/the-turnaway-study-ten-years-a-thousand-women-and-the-consequences-of-having-or-being-denied-an-abortion/9781982141561
Then read our stories via @AbortionStories.
Then read our stories via @AbortionStories.
Read @Karnythia's new book Hood Feminism that looks at the history of all of the racist policies, including those on reproduction, and how they impact Black folks—particularly those in the hood—and are left out of mainstream feminism conversations. https://bookshop.org/books/hood-feminism-notes-from-the-women-that-a-movement-forgot/9780525560548
Pre-order @zakiyaluna's new book Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice as she has been studying this framework for decades. https://bookshop.org/books/reproductive-rights-as-human-rights-women-of-color-and-the-fight-for-reproductive-justice/9781479831296
I truly understand what this thread is trying to do, but it really misses the mark and de-centers those of us of color who have abortions, our experiences, and our resistance. We can talk about both—our struggle and our work. We deserve autonomy and to exist within our history.
