Two weeks ago, Purdue Students for Life plastered posters and chalked the sidewalk in front of the Black Cultural Center with anti-abortion messages mocking the Civil Rights Movement and #BlackLivesMatter, calling the womb the most dangerous place for Black children. The Black Cultural Center serves as a safe haven for Black students studying at the predominantly white institution and navigating anti-Black racism on campus. According to the group’s leadership, targeting the center and twisting language associated with Black resistance against police brutality was intentional. Their tactics aren’t new, and I contend racism within anti-abortion ranks is more indicative of pro-birth crusades than sincerely held religious belief.
In 1968, prominent evangelical institutions published work substantiated by scientific research and Old Testament interpretation, describing abortion as moral and legal because the Bible clearly distinguishes a fetus from a human life. Ten years later, the rhetoric of contemporary anti-abortion groups was born, this time backed by more opinion than scripture and science. Today, religious conservatives promote sanctity of life while destroying social programs for struggling families and supporting militarism, mass incarceration and the death penalty. The anti-abortion movement is deeply hypocritical, solely focused on bringing pregnancies to term.
Anti-abortion groups also question the motives of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and advocate of eugenics. Sanger’s work primarily brought birth control methods to poor white communities to stem poverty. Eugenics is profoundly problematic, but Sanger’s efforts in the Black community are worth exploration. References to Sanger evoke singular quotes purposely taken out of context. She partnered with Black leaders to distribute birth control and train Black doctors to meet reproductive needs.
Women of color have a long history of maintaining their agency, rooted in indigenous practices. The pre-colonial West African Kindezi system, communal babysitting, allowed women to contribute to the economy as decision makers. West Africans enslaved in the U.S. continued practicing the Kindezi tradition on plantations. Raising children mirrored the village approach of the Continent, and Black women actively resisted the sexual violence of white slave masters by self-aborting unwanted pregnancies.
Iroquois women owned land and tended crops, maintained households and held chiefs accountable to the community. Familial heritage was matrilineal, and power between women and men was virtually equal. White suffragettes observed Iroquois principles in hopes of replicating their practices. However, unchecked racism eroded their efforts, a struggle that still exists in mainstream feminism today.
During Second-Wave Feminism, abortion rights were purposely detached from reproductive wellness in order to win Roe v. Wade. Abortion access benefited middle class, heterosexual white women at the expense of underserved people. The pro-abortion rights movement, awash in the same racism propping up the anti-abortion agenda, fails to analyze the realities of choice and ignores the experiences of women of color, queer people and poor people to advance the feminist cause. Due to missteps by their leadership and anti-abortion mischaracterization, Planned Parenthood is pigeonholed as a pro-abortion group, jeopardizing the health of marginalized communities as conservative politicians campaign to close these facilities. Further, the organization co-opts the language of the Reproductive Justice movement, a framework created by SisterSong, the leading women of color reproductive justice collective.
The foundation of reproductive justice is birthed of indigenous and women-centered traditions from around the world and prioritizes the needs of women of color and low-income women. From this perspective, abortion care cannot be separated from reproductive justice, which expands access to options so choice is a reality in marginalized communities.
The ability to end a pregnancy or have a child and live in a healthy environment is about far more than abortion rights. For women to lead self-determined lives requires addressing gender inequity as it intersects with other forms of oppression.
I doubt if Purdue Students for Life understands the complexities of its fight against abortion, let alone the experiences of Black Purdue students or the needs of Black women informing reproductive justice. The consistent champions of Black women’s self-determination are Black women. Audre Lorde wrote in Sister Outsider, “There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” Black women know this truth all too well. We advocate for ourselves and others accordingly, for gender equity and then some.
Elle Roberts is a musician and writer based in Indianapolis. She is the founder of shehive, a grassroots gender equity project. To contact her, email elle@inxof.com.
