Women's Continuing Battle to Control Their Bodies
When the Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe V. Wade, a ripple effect could
be seen across our Nation as over half of the states acted to restrict abortion.
As these enactments have occurred, one of the ironies observed is that White
men dominate these efforts. Specifically, in 21 states that voted to
ban abortions, White male Republicans accounted for 60 to 93
percent of State Legislators.
Women have fought to control their reproductive rights and
control over their bodies throughout U.S. history. A look at the timeline of
these struggles provides a clear record of their progress and what problems
remain. One of the earliest moments occurred during slavery, then again during
the Great Depression. In many cases, men, particularly White men, have led the
charge to control women's bodies. As many as 40% of enslavers might have been White
women. After 1809 the United States stopped importing
enslaved people, and enslavers (regardless of gender) became more concerned
with controlling enslaved women's bodies to ensure high birth rates.
Distrustful of midwives, who tended to be Black, they turned increasingly to White male doctors. For the rest of women
and until the beginning of the
20th Century, midwives, female family
members, and friends performed most births throughout the U.S.
Legal control over women's bodies began as early as 1821 as the
Connecticut General Assembly passed the first ban on medical abortions after detecting fetal movement (typically in the fourth or fifth month of
pregnancy). The next period was equally ambivalent, as some women gained fuller
control of their bodies, while others witnessed the loss of bodily autonomy as
eugenics came into being. So, Margaret Sanger pushed to expand women's
control over their bodies, opening the first birth control clinic in 1916. By 1939, she had
launched her "New Negro Project" to discourage and
eliminate defective and diseased elements of humanity. Topping her list were
protocols to prevent the "dysgenic horror story" of Blacks who
reproduced "carelessly and disastrously," she was also actively
pushing for laws that would control the same freedoms for and to Black women. Males
in medicine and the legislature soon took her calls, and the eugenics movement began.
Slavery and no freedom to
choose
From our Nation's inception, midwives dominated women's
health, and what would become obstetrics. African midwives, imported as early as the
17th Century on slave ships, attended to the needs of the enslaved
and the enslavers on many southern plantations. Midwives and enslaved
women often were blamed for or suspected of utilizing birth
control and abortions to resist slavery. Things drastically changed after 1808 with
the ban on importing new enslaved people. They have blamed enslaved
mothers and midwives for infant mortality. As a result, enslavers became
dependent upon White male doctors to increase the birth rates among enslaved people. With this shift
also came the forced breeding of
enslaved women. Forced breeding by enslavers was a systematic
way enslavers attempted to force enslaved women to bear more children to
increase their profits. In the
process, enslaved women were forced to have sex with an increasing number of males,
forced to become pregnant, and forced to produce as many children as they
could. They believed these profits depended on increased
production of workers, therefore the need to control and exploit Black women's
reproductive capacities. The result was a total loss of bodily autonomy.
By the 19th Century, as
male-dominated medicine evolved, and the practice of gynecology emerged,
midwifery was increasingly under attack. The challenges
to midwifery also were promoted to encourage the development of Western
science and hospitals. As White male doctors became the primary factor in
enslaved children's birth, they began experimenting violently with Black women
without consent or anesthesia. These experiments led to the development
of modern gynecology. And by the beginning of the 20th Century,
White male physicians, with limited training in obstetrics, were delivering
half of the births. Only in the South did Black midwives continue to dominate,
accounting for over 75% of the births until the 1940s. But a series of laws,
educational restrictions, and targeted campaigns served to delegitimize the
profession. These efforts, led by White male doctors, allowed them to create
monopolies on women's bodies. These
undercut women's reproductive health and forced many qualified
Black women out of the medical field.
Eugenics and Control over
Women's Bodies
The beginning of the 20th
Century also began the eugenics movement within the United States. The campaign received funding from some of
our nation's leading male corporate leaders. Such leaders as Carnegie, Rockefeller, Kellog,
and Harriman expressed intent to improve the genetic quality of the
American people. At the same time, the campaign, heavily populated by males, specifically
targeted women. Some research suggests
that one of the aims of eugenics was to white, middle-class men's
fear of an increasingly diverse and gendered America. Collectively,
these operated to control women's bodies through various programs associated
with eugenics. Therefore, eugenics encouraged the reproduction of some women
while discouraging that of others. Within the United
States, the low birth rates of White Protestant Americans,
coupled with higher birth rates of Catholic populations, such as Irish and
Italian, Blacks, and other marginalized groups, was considered not only
unhealthy but the direct cause of many social ills such as prostitution, crime,
drug and alcohol abuse, insanity, and a range of other mental and physical
illnesses. These conditions were directly related to genetic traits controlled
by sterilizing those unfit for reproduction. Forced
sterilization, and the complete loss of body autonomy, became the tool to enhance the racial and
gender hierarchies by targeting the poor, disabled, mentally ill, and those in
racialized communities such as Mexican-Americans, African American, Asian American, Eastern Europeans, and
Native Americans.
Starting with
Indiana, in 1907, 33 states instituted laws for
involuntary sterilization of those deemed undesirable for procreation. These
state laws, compulsory sterilization, were upheld in a 1927 Supreme Court
ruling. Often eugenicists used intelligence tests to
determine those that were "fit and unfit" to reproduce. The fact that
these only reified the racial hierarchies by
asserting that upper-to-middle class status, dominated by white protestants,
were superior strains. Under the programs that developed, women, particularly African American,
Native American, and Hispanic American women, were
more likely to be sterilized by doctors working for or with the Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare, the Indian Health Service, and Medicaid.
From 1907 to 1939, as many as 30,000 forced sterilizations across 29 states occurred without their knowledge. Most of these, particularly Black,
Latina, and Native American women, were
in either prisons or psychiatric institutions. Prison-forced sterilizations are
not ancient history. Between 1930 and
1970, close to 33% of the women in Puerto Rico, a U.S.
territory, were forcibly sterilized. In the '60s, Black women made up 65% of
the women sterilized in North Carolina while
only making up 25% of the population. California, where close to half of all
forced sterilizations took place, stands out. Between 1997 and
2003, 1,400 female inmates, mostly Black, were forcibly sterilized.
The Contemporary Era and
Control over Women's Bodies
Existential White
male fears are producing the most recent attack on women's bodies. White nationalists have
created what they call "White Replacement
theory," which argues that nonwhites, globalists,
politicians, and the corporate elite are working to destroy, replace, or
eliminate the white race and its position in American policy by encouraging
immigration, civil rights, and affirmative action. They also believe that
feminism, LGTBTQ+ policies, and programs lead to a loss of traditional gender
roles and a significant decrease in white babies being born. These fears, which
they label White replacement theory, are associated with demographic shifts.
Accordingly, within the next 20 years, the United States will be
majority-minority for the first time. Not only are Blacks and Hispanics
targeted, but
immigrants as well.
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