Source: KEREM YUCEL / Getty
Since its formation in the 1800s, women’s rights have informed a international movement around the basis of equality claimed for women and girls worldwide. The right to live free, vote, hold public office, work and have equal rights, and enjoy the highest attainable access to suitable healthcare have been inclusive fundamentals of the women’s rights movement.
More specifically, women’s rights have historically held particular notions of issues commonly associated with the right to bodily autonomy and freedom from sexual violence and discrimination. Despite significant strides by the movement, women and girls worldwide still face discrimination and violence against reproductive rights. What is deemed a commonly associated issue for women overall, more urgently presents a death sentence for Black women.
Nearly 50 years after the historic landmark decision that helped inform and shape women’s rights to choose, The Supreme Court in a 5–4 decision, viciously overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood, ending the constitutional right to abortion and shaking women’s rights to the core.
More personally for Black women, the decision represents a deeper plunge into devastating health effects; — as if significant health and maternal mortality rates are not disparaging enough, the ban could potentially raise Black maternal deaths to 33 percent, in the same America where Black women already face some of the worst health and pregnancy-related outcomes.
And it’s hard to shake the feeling that disproportionate health outcomes in Black women became the heart of discourse on reproductive rights for all women. Yet, somehow when it came to centering or addressing concerns specifically related to the Black female community, the heart stopped beating. Or the feeling that these issues threatening to plague us, played a vital role in a reoccurring theme continuing to afflict the movement today.
Just not the vital role we needed.
In the early 1960s, a single Black mother of two imagined a world of reproductive freedom that meant equal access, such as reliable oral contraceptives and safe abortions before the two were informed by name or existence. For Black women like Frances Beal, the right to have children on their terms and access to proper health is one of the most basic elements of human rights in a society where Black women’s choices were disproportionately influenced by gender, racism and class.
Beal writes in her pamphlet, Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female:
I personally had a friend from high school who died from a backstreet abortion. Right from the beginning, I was pro-access to abortion because I had her in the back of my mind the whole time. This wonderful, intelligent, Black woman would be walking the face of this Earth if she had had access to legal abortion.
Black women like Beal began to weigh in on reproduction as more than rights or choices, but how their lives were impacted by multiple conditions that interfered with their rights and choices. This history of involuntary reproductive oppression began to inform its profound impact on Black women in future decades.
As a result, Beal and many other activists urgently took concern in addressing reproduction and other related issues such as welfare, childcare and any other necessary requirements that could potentially help raise their children, therefore choosing to keep them in the world.
By the 70s, Black women’s issues on reproductive health became more distinct from the women’s reproductive rights movement, due to overwhelming marginalization. Black women felt that the women’s rights movement focused primarily on pro-choice rather than pro-life discourse, while also excluding how factors such as race and class hinder Black women from making sound decisions regarding pregnancy and access to safe, affordable health care.
It became deeper than rights for Black women, but about equality.
Activist and writer, Elaine Brown, advocated for acknowledgment of reproductive rights unique to Black women during her affiliation with the Black Panther Party, with rhetoric that included a platform for Black women:
I would support every assertion of human rights by women — from the right to abortion to the right of equality with men as laborers and leaders.
During this time, Byllye Avery, a health care activist became a key proponent of reproductive education that helped address mental and physical health stressors among Black women. Avery believed in addressing the specific needs of women, while also educating other women about their reproductive rights and overall general health. In 1975, along with three other feminists, Avery co-founded The Gainesville Women’s Health Center.
Avery would continue her activism for Black women’s rights well into the next decade. In 1983, Avery founded The National Black Women’s Health Project, an initiative dedicated to educating women regarding domestic violence, contraceptives, access to safe and affordable abortions, and other birthing plan options.
The lack of urgency to address key issues directly affecting the health outcomes for many Black women became widely understood. Their insight into the ways that reproductive injustice would negatively affect their circumstances compelled Black feminists such as Beal, Brown, and Avery to create initiatives that directly address these concerns, but also demand reproductive equality at every turn.
In June 1994 in Chicago, Illinois, 12 Black women: Toni M. Bond Leonard, Reverend Alma Crawford, Evelyn S. Field, Terri James, Bisola Marignay, Cassandra McConnell, Cynthia Newbille, Loretta Ross, Elizabeth Terry, ‘Able’ Mable Thomas, Winnette P. Willis, and Kim Youngblood, united for a conference sponsored by the Illinois Pro-Choice Alliance and Ms. Foundation for Women. In response to a proposed plan from the Clinton administration on health care, The Women of African Descent Group gathered to express their Black female stance on universal health reform.
In their statement supported by 800+ signatures around the country, the Black women dubbed themselves The Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice (later, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice). A collective framework around addressing the reproductive health issues directly affecting Black women was formed and a new term was coined; — merging reproductive rights and social justice all in one.
RELATED CONTENT: Black Reproductive Health Advocates Attend UN Convention To Garner Support In Holding The U.S. Accountable
SisterSong defined reproductive justice as, “the human right to maintain reproduction and personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”
Three years later in 1997, American sociologist and law professor, Dorothy E Roberts would inform reproductive rights in Black women through a historical lens in her book: Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. In her influential work, Roberts confronts the misogynoir, racism, and classism faced by Black women throughout U.S. History and how negative perceptions of Black women influence continued reproductive oppression:
“Although these attitudes are not universally held, they influence the way many Americans think about reproduction. Myths are more than made-up stories…firmly held beliefs that represent and attempt to explain what we perceive to be the truth. They can become more credible than reality, holding fast even in the face of airtight statistics and rational argument to the contrary.”
In 2022, as protests erupted throughout the world, 20 Black congresswomen in a letter to President Biden, urged a declaration of a national emergency as a result of the Roe v. Wadeoverturning. Lawmakers including Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, Nikema Williams, and Marilyn Strickland urged Biden to “use any and all executive authorities to address the public health crisis our nation will face if Roe v. Wade is dismantled.”
The intergenerational effects of reproductive oppression deeply felt, has left it imperative for Black women to call people up as we call our injustices out.
Because the truth is, reproductive rights were never secure.
And that’s on Black women.
The reproductive justice framework provides that all factors, which impact the reproductive health of Black women, should reconsider policy reshaping that would reflect improved and equal health access. The demand sends a message to legislators, politicians, social leaders, and even the women’s rights movement, that the right decision was imperative on behalf of Black women.
A reproductive justice message that sees reproductive rights as human rights.
Many Black women-led organizations continue to inform their right to reproductive justice today.
Black women have prepared places on the frontline battle for reproductive justice for decades. However, international organizations such as the women’s rights movement have, unfortunately, — mobilized rights such as abortion and reproductive rights predominately among white women and girls, — while often ignoring how the issues are severely critical to Black women. I will never understand the irony of women most affected by the overturning of women’s rights going undocumented and unheard.
What is a movement if it refuses to center the needs of the immovable?
Black women deserve to be visible and have a rightful share in the decisions and discourse of mainstream movements and political policies. By focusing on women’s rights to pro-choice, their advocacy ignores the barriers Black women face such as lack of sex education and contraceptives, limited or no access to safe abortions, and potential sexual violence and discrimination. By centering the heavily vulnerable, — those most critically impacted by decisions such as overturning Roe v. Wade, the struggle for reproductive rights will shift lenses from merely choices or options, but a valuable stride in reproductive justice.
Women’s rights have yet to meet or center the needs of Black women although many social, political, and international movements such as women’s rights began with Black women. More often than not, Black women are missing from conversations within international movements, though they have largely contributed and provided the groundwork for the current discourse on women’s rights today.
Unfortunately, It is possible that the women’s right movement, dominated by middle class wealthy white women will never be capable of representing the needs of Black women and women of color. Or understanding how multiple oppressive systems incriminal justice, economies, and healthcare work together to negatively affect Black women’s reproductive decisions.
The idea of Reproductive justice seeks to confront these systems and can only be achieved when all women and girls have complete economic, political, and social resources to make healthy decisions about our bodies, families, and communities.
In a world where Roe v. Wade has been overturned, know that abortion rights and pro-choices are not the only subject matter at stake. The war on Black women’s reproductive rights is more than a political playground of discourse or litany of rights, but is a critical self-determining fight for equality. Black women paid a heavy price for providing the beating heart for defining women’s rights. —Till this day, the following organizations continue to do so:
- Abortion Care Network
- Ancient Song Doula Services
- Center for Reproductive Rights
- Changing Woman Initiative
- Indigenous Women Rising
- National Birth Equity Collaborative
- National Black Midwives Alliance
- SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective
At minimum, women’s rights owe Black women every right to lay it bare:
There is no choice where there is no access.
RELATED CONTENT: The Fight For Reproductive Justice Continues: National Birth Equity Collaborative Releases Statement On The Roe V. Wade Overturn
