Race of Anti-Abortion Activists & Terrorists + Why We Need Black

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sun Aug 22 10:16:02 PDT 1999


Gordon replied to me:
>> ... To my knowledge, all the known anti-abortion terrorists
>> have been white as well. If anyone doubts this, go do clinic defense
>> work. At the same time, about one third of the abortion clinic
>> patients are women of color. This racial demographics of anti-abortion
>> activists and clinic patients give rise to racialized sexual
>> brutalization, reminiscent of slave owners' desire to make black women
>> breeders and to otherwise deny them agency in reproduction.
>> ...
>
>Curiously, most modern (overt) racists seems to think Black
>women breed altogether too much. My own perception of anti-
>choice anti-abortionist ideology is that it often seems to
>emanate from identification with the (probably male) fetus;
>can a White racist identify with a presumably Black fetus?
>If a lot of anti-abortionists _are_ racists, there's an
>interesting contradiction here.

Yes, I agree that there is an interesting contradiction (which the left may be able to exploit, especially with black women's leadership -- more on this later).

There is a common ground between two forms of racist fantasies ("you breed too much" & "you are having abortions without the consent & supervision of (white) fathers"). In both cases, the point of racist fantasies is to deny black women _agency_ and _self-determination_. For instance, racism & sexism in population-control thinking have led to the imposition, often upon women of color, of the kind of contraceptives that take away their conscious control of their own bodies: sterilization; Depo-Provera (injection); & Norplant (implant). They don't push condoms (male or female), diaphragm, nor the pill (including the morning-after pill) -- the type of contraceptives that are favorable to the exercise of women's own conscious agency (and in the case of male condoms, men's active cooperation).

As to the race of the fetus, anti-abortionists' advocacy of adoption reminds us of the differential treatment of unmarried pregnant young women during the pre-Roe post-WW2 period. Young white women were asked to go to "maternity homes," give birth, and then give up babies to white couples, because their babies were sought after. On the other hand, black women were excluded from most maternity homes. A racist advocacy of "benign negelct" & cultural relativism provided a justification for the exclusion: "black communities have and will take care of babies." Another form of racism advocated at the same time the punishment of "black illegitimacy," which was made visible through the secrecy & privacy (coupled with shaming through isolation) of maternity homes for young white women. (For more info on this difference, see Rickie Solinger's _Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race before Roe v. Wade_.)

The advocacy of adoption as alternative of abortion reduces women -- especially poorer white women -- to vessels. Beyond that, anti-abortionists keep an awkward silence about the fact that the "shortage of babies in the adoption market" specifically concern the shortage of _white babies_. (For more analysis of the subject, see Patricia Williams, "On Being the Object of Property," _Signs_ 14 [Autumn 1988].)

To sum up, sexism & racism inhere in the denial of women's agency and self-determination, _both in anti-abortion and population control ideologies_. And we need to forcefully point this out. And women of color -- especially black women -- have led the way in this regard, and I think other leftists should follow.

Yoshie



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