In my latest Substack newsletter, “Mobile Fragments,”-gets?s=w I discuss my thoughts about the history of reproductive justice.
From: https://www.nyhistory.org/womens-history
What would the world look like if everyone had full and complete autonomy over their bodies? The question is latent with cursory ambiguity but freighted with potent connotation. The non-consensual (and inappropriate) graze by a manager or the urge to tattoo flower petals on one’s arm echoes the range of ways that people navigate their sovereignty. The extent to which our bodies are wounded, molested, respected, and admired is also rooted in the privileges and exclusions we have historically and currently inherited, the assumptions about ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and gender, all shape—in critical ways—which bodies are given autonomy. For African American women, being able to exercise full freedom of movement, swim in a river, make love to one’s suitor, or even terminate a pregnancy were historically denied, a precedent that speaks to how American society has thwarted Black women’s freedom. “One thing we all agree on, and the real purpose of Black feminist thought, is our desire to be ourselves and to have control over our own bodies,” Simone Leigh marveled as she reflected on her exhibition, Sovereignty Premiering at the 59th Venice Biennale, her mixed media and immersive exposition marshaled a celebration of Black women. As an admirer of Leigh's work, I wallow in her ability to generate sculptures that simultaneously possess gentleness and might. Sprinkled with hope, admiration, and purpose, her message—in Sovereignty—is a cavernous appeal to history that pivots to Black women’s unrelenting quest to be free.
As a feminist, bodily autonomy has been a centerpiece of my activism. When I first moved to Germany in 2017, I joined Frauenstreik, a feminist coalition that was comprised of socialists, migrants, and anarchists. During my first couple of years of organizing alongside German feminists, I learned that they had been fighting for the decriminalization of abortion, a right that came with bureaucratic red tape. What is even more damning is that although one can get an abortion in Germany, abortion is technically illegal. This is based on Paragraph 218 of the German constitution which defines abortion as murder while article 219a makes it illegal for doctors to advertise, advise, or inform patients about abortions. Another shocking fact is that despite there being 83 million living in Germany, as of 2018 there are only 1200 abortion providers in the country. According to DW News, some German medical schools have declined to offer abortion procedures in their curriculum, leading to a reduction in doctors who can terminate pregnancies. Pro-choice advocates not only want the immediate abolition of articles 218 and 219a but they also want the public health department to provide free contraceptives upon demand, rightly noting that the German anti-abortion laws are especially oppressive towards poor and migrant women. The global fight for reproductive rights is not lost on me.
Every time I read about the events in America, I am taken aback by the unfurled dogmatism of the US conservatives. When I read about the leaked document Supreme Court that is poised to eliminate federal protections for abortion as we know it, my emotional palette moved from rage, confusion, and despair, to shock. Justice Alito’s proclamation: “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled.” The judicial arrogance to restrain people’s ability to have an abortion will have a destructive impact on people with wombs, which will relegate them to having less access to safe abortion or in some cases being forced to carry out unwanted pregnancies.
For as long as I’ve been sexually active, I have always had free access to and consumed multiple types of contraceptives-from the ring, IUD, the patch, and even the Depo Provera shot. In circumstances when I had an impassioned (and brief) error with a long-gone lover, taking Plan B (the morning after pill) gave me the freedom to prevent an unwanted pregnancy from people whose names I still do not know. This is a privilege that was not given to feminists born before the 1980s, and it should be a free and unalienable right that everyone should have access to.
The pre-Roe vs. Wade was unpredictable and horrific, which caused many people to die from unsafe abortions. Even when doctors were willing to provide the care, the writer and activist Grace Paley noted that they could face persecution for performing an abortion, stating:
this kind of criminalization of the medical profession, the danger these doctors were in. It meant that they could not take care of you. It’s not even about abortion.
Roe vs. Wade’s anticipated appeal is not difficult to fathom. For the past fifty years, the legislation has provided basic federal protection for a safe and abortion, a bare minimum that allows people with wombs to dictate whether or not they reproduce. (Note: Conservatives have been restricting and legislating against abortion rights since Roe vs. Wade was enacted). The proposed Supreme Court draft declares that Roe vs. Wade cannot be protected by the Fourteenth Amendment because it is not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” I’m no legal scholar, but I find this argument flawed. If we were to base twenty-first-century social norms on an eighteenth-century document, then given that I am a Black person I would be considered three-fifths of a person. If they were operating with good faith, the judicial body would be progressing towards how they can make society more just, rather than upholding the antiquated modes of the past. Other parts of the document indicate that “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.” In a way, they are correct, but not for the reasons progressives would outline. As Jill Lepore remarks in The New Yorker:
I don’t happen to think Roe was well argued. I agree with Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s early analysis—that grounding the right in equality rather than privacy might have been a sounder approach.
Another provocation by the conservative justices for overturning Roe vs. Wade is that the law has inflamed debate and deepened divisions. To an undiscerning eye, this might seem reasonable, abortion has been divisive as Republican-led states have passed anti-abortion laws throughout the US–including Texas abortion SB 8 law which was passed earlier this year, and Oklahoma signing a 6-week ban on abortion. Texas’s law is particularly egregious. Journalist Kali Holloway points out, that SB 8’s vigilantism echoes the reactionary spirit of nineteenth-century Fugitive Slave Laws. Despite SCOTUS’s claim that Roe v. Wade causes discord, given that nearly 60% of Americans support access to legal abortion, the reversal of these rights will continue to alienate a majority of Americans whose lives will be infringed upon by minority rule.
Despite being in Europe, it is hard to escape the recurrent news cycle, which updates us on the malice of American conservatives and the disbelief (and occasional inertia) of the majority. But this feels different. People are incensed and rapidly mobilizing, even demanding that we expand our political reach. As Melissa Gira Grant wrote in The New Republic, there are limits to electoral politics during this moment:
So it is understandable why so many abortion-rights supporters are sick of the idea still promoted by some Democratic lawmakers that it’s on us to vote our way out of this. It is especially enraging to be told this when Democrats hold Congress right now but—in part, thanks to the undemocratic distribution of Senate seats granting extra power to smaller, conservative states, paired with the anti-majoritarian procedures of the filibuster—cannot pass federal legislation to ensure the right and access to abortion, like the Women’s Health Protection Act.
This is not the first time that people have sounded an alarm about abortion. Black women as the canary in the coal mine, when it comes to reproductive rights, often noting that reproductive rights should be more capacious than abortion alone. As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor noted in The New Yorker, a position that Black feminists have continued to advocate in the US, arguing:
By focussing on the plight of poor women, they made it easier to see that the struggle for abortion and reproductive freedom was about equality, not just privacy or even “choice.” Their insights into the ways that poverty and other forms of oppression limited their life chances compelled them to demand reproductive justice—which also involved the right to raise children in healthy environments where their and their parents’ basic needs could be met. It is a standard that certainly was not achieved with Roe, but is needed now more than ever.
From: https://www.nyhistory.org/womens-history
The term reproductive justice was coined in 1994 by Loretta Ross and other Black women activists who believed that reproductive justice was linked to a broader issue concerning race, gender, class, and freedom. Many people are not only concerned about the immediate impact of this legislation–which would remove federal protection for an abortion, but it can be a harbinger for other constitutional rights that were previously established by the Supreme Court: birth control, same-sex marriage, and equality in the workplace. Besides its explicit regression in personal liberty and bodily autonomy, overturning Roe vs. Wade adds to the growing repression in the US, a world that has been unabashedly brutalized by conservative rule. Their goal is to bring us back to a barbaric period. If they come after abortion, they will come after contraceptives, If they come after abortion, they will come after gay rights. Anyone who has been vilified by the conservatives can confidently say that cruelty is the point.
Some suggested reading
The purpose of reading is to provide insight, displace anxiety, and misdirect the eye from the mundane to the spectacle of life. Below, I have provided a list that indulges, both intermittently and imperfectly, reproductive rights.
Loretta Ross, What Is Reproductive Justice?
Black Women on Universal Health Care Reform
Tiffany Diane Tso, 5 Reproductive Justice Advocates to Know This Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
Caitlin Van Horn, Trans and Nonbinary People Get Abortions Too
Tris Mamone, For Trans Men Seeking Reproductive Health Care, There Are Barriers Every Step of the Way
Paula Akpan, What Sexual Health Looks Like For These Black Disabled Women
Dierdre Cooper Owens, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology
Angela Davis, Women, Race & Class
Patricia Zavella, The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color through Social Activism
Evelyn Nakano Glenn, From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor
Saidya Hartman, Belly of the World
geunsaeng ahn, Abolition Is Not a One Time Event: Prison Doulas as Catalysts
Michelle W. Tam, Queering Reproductive Access: Reproductive Justice in Assisted Reproductive Technologies
What You Can Do
I suggest reading Rebecca Solnit’s latest article in The Guardian: Here’s how Americans can fight back to protect abortion rights
An informative text by Lux Magazine on The Gentrification of Abortion Rights
Support reproductive rights and LGBTQIA organizations that are working towards social justice include:
Queering Reproductive Justice: A Mini Toolkit
Sistersong: Mission is to strengthen and amplify the collective voices of indigenous women and women of color to achieve reproductive justice by eradicating reproductive oppression and securing human rights.
Pridelines: To support, educate and Miami’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth and community in safe and diverse spaces to promote dialogue, wellness, and foster social change.
Audre Lorde Project: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two-Spirit, Trans and Gender Non-Conforming People of Color community organizing center, focusing on the New York City area
And before I forget, remember to protest.
With radical love,