By Sikivu Hutchinson
From The Humanist
Abortion as Black genocide. The
most dangerous place for a black child is the womb. Over the past several years, these toxic
canards, often cloaked
in civil rights rhetoric, have been used to smear abortion and demonize black
women’s bodies. In 2009, when conservative organizations began targeting
communities of color with anti-abortion billboard propaganda, black and Latina
women’s organizations fought back with their own billboards and media
campaigns. These unrelenting assaults on
the reproductive rights and self-determination of black women are epitomized by
the wave of anti-abortion and anti-contraception state laws that have rocked
the nation. One of the most egregious recent examples is a Missouri
bill dubbed the “All Lives Matter Act”, which would define a fertilized egg
as a person with rights. This blatant appropriation
of the Black Lives Matter mantle is just another example of the right wing’s
efforts to undermine black liberation struggle by distorting the language of
human rights.
To bolster its claims
that abortion is genocide, images of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger
are stamped with Nazi swastikas. Historically revisionist assessments of
Planned Parenthood conveniently omit the connection many early
20th century progressive Black activists made between family
planning, birth control, abortion, and black liberation. Tellingly,
prominent Nazis like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mary McLeod Bethune and Ida
B. Wells supported Sanger’s controversial work with the Birth Control
Federation of America.
In February, in an effort to address this tactic, Black Lives Matter activists publicly
aligned
with reproductive justice activists.
Historically, reproductive
justice has always been about more than just unrestricted access to
abortion and birth control. Under
slavery and Jim Crow, black women had
little to no control over their reproductive destinies. In addition to
having the least
wealth of any group in the U.S., black women are also more
likely to get abortions—precisely because of wealth and health care
disparities. Thus, for black women, reproductive justice is a precondition for
mental health, wellness, bodily autonomy and community enfranchisement. Spearheaded nationally by the Atlanta-based
African American women’s organization Sister
Song, the concept of reproductive justice draws upon the notion of intersectionality,
which situates women’s right to self-determination within a broader economic
justice and human rights framework. As
Sister Song notes:
Reproductive Justice
is a positive approach that links sexuality, health, and human rights to social
justice movements by placing abortion and reproductive health issues in the
larger context of the well-being and health of women, families and communities
because reproductive justice seamlessly integrates those individual and group
human rights particularly important to marginalized communities. We believe
that the ability of any woman to determine her own reproductive destiny is
directly linked to the conditions in her community and these conditions are not
just a matter of individual choice and access.
Discussing
the relationship between Black Lives Matter activism and reproductive justice,
BLM co-founder Alicia Garza maintained:
I
think from our perspective, reproductive justice is very much
situated within the Black Lives Matter movement. And the way we that talk
about that is that essentially, it’s not just about the right for women to be
able to determine when and how and where they want to start families, but it is
also very much about our right to be able to raise families, to be able to
raise children to become adults…. And that is being hindered by state violence
in many different forms. One form being violence by law enforcement or other
state forces, and the other form of crisis through poverty and lack of access
to resources and lack of access to health communities that are safe and
sustainable. So we certainly understand that BLM and reproductive justice go
hand in hand.
This is an important
juncture in the BLM movement because it further broadens its scope, making an
explicit connection between anti-abortion legislation, reactionary misogynist,
anti-black “messaging” and economic justice activism. BLM’s embrace also comes
at critical moment in the national mobilization over women’s rights. As the Supreme Court weighs
HB2, a Texas law requiring that doctors who perform abortions at local health
clinics have hospital admitting privileges, the threat to health care for poor
and working class women has deepened. If the court upholds this dangerous law
Texas would be left with as few as nine abortion clinics and other states would
have the right to enforce similar laws.
The insidious implications of this shift should be a catalyst for
further intersectional organizing—bringing together humanist, feminist and
progressive voices against the forces of religious and political fascism.
