The Origins of the Reproductive Justice Movement

Written by: Becca Williams, SBT Copywriter

We’ve spent the last few weeks learning about Black women’s reproductive and bodily autonomy, from the forced reproduction of enslaved Black women, to eugenics and the forced sterilizations of women of color that occurred until the late 20^th Century, to the reproductive coercion that still happens to this day.  Today, we’ll spend some time learning about the origins of the Reproductive Justice (RJ) movement, a movement started and sustained by women, trans, and nonbinary folx of color that centers their autonomy, safety, and integrity. 

For this post, I’ll be relying heavily on information from my own library, namely the books Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall, Nikole Hannah-Jones’ The 1619 Project, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs by Betsy Hartmann, and Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice, compiled by Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross, and Elena R. Gutierrez. This is a topic I’ve long been interested in, from a distance.  In learning about the reproductive rights movement, I have typically come across vague information linking this movement to the Reproductive Justice (RJ) movement and linking the RJ movement to women of color.  This frames the RJ movement as a branch of the mainstream pro-choice movement.  This version of the RJ movement’s history is not only very whitewashed, it is also harmful as it diminishes the centuries of leadership, advocacy, and movement-building which women of color have engaged in.  It focuses on the White-centric narrative that the pro-choice movement is the standard for reproductive rights, with every other aspect of organizing being peripheral. 

If we (White women) honestly take a look at where Whiteness operates in the reproductive rights and RJ movements, what Whiteness impedes, and how mainstream White movements interact with RJ movements, I think we’d see that so much more can be accomplished in ceding the spotlight, engaging in a real analysis of power and coercion within the movement itself, and talking about ways in which we can amplify RJ work.  RJ doesn’t threaten mainstream pro-choice work, rather it creates space for all possibilities of healthy reproductive living.

One facet of White Supremacy is the separation of parts that in reality, encompass the whole.  This dissection – merely saying “The Reproductive Justice movement was started by women of color to address systemic barriers to reproductive health” is not only reductive, it cuts us off from seeing the long thread of history and context that have manifested RJ.  The reason behind this severing is important.  It maintains White comfort by keeping Whiteness engaged at a surface level that doesn’t interrogate the painful parts of our past that we’d rather not address, like the forced reproduction of enslaved women, the forced separation of Indigenous and immigrant families, the forced sterilization of women of color, and the ways in which reproductive coercion is tied to government benefits – essentially, we don’t want to address the impacts of Whiteness and our complicity in upholding White Supremacy.  This is why learning this history is important.  It creates a sense of discomfort and an awareness that the past really isn’t that far behind us – and that we have a lot of our own work to do.

For this post, we’ll spend some time on eugenics and the use of contraception as population control, before moving into the ways in which White women narrowed the scope of the reproductive rights movement, and ultimately discussing the origins of the RJ movement.

In the 1930s, the earlier days of the eugenics movement, much of the dominant narrative around birth control was tied to population control.  As we know from last month’s blog, Planned Parenthood was founded on these racist and eugenicist principles, and experimental birth control trials were often conducted in low income neighborhoods and communities of color – in disregard for their health and as a way to limit population growth.  Guy Irving Burch, Margaret Sanger’s friend and colleague on the National Committee for Federal Legislation for Birth Control, wrote that he supported birth control “to prevent the American people from being replaced by alien or negro stock, whether it be by immigrant or by overly high birth rates among others in this country.”  From the genesis of modern-day contraceptive use, we can see how one [White] person’s interpretation of reproductive freedom is tied to the reproductive coercion and population control of communities of color – Black and brown women were experimented on in order for White women to obtain FDA-approved contraception.  We can already start to understand the vastly different experiences with what has been deemed “reproductive rights.”

(Book written by Guy Irving Burch, from this website.)

A few decades later, the fear around the environmental and financial impacts of an increasing population took hold. President Nixon’s cabinet assembled statistics that pointed to the Black community as responsible for this growth, citing evidence that the most significant bulge in the population was in Black children between the ages of 5 and 9 and making the racist connection between this purported increase and social “problems” later on.  From here, White Republicans and Democrats alike began supporting fertility controls in communities of color, with President Clinton’s welfare reform placing family caps on recipients (meaning a person is no longer eligible for benefits if they have a child while receiving benefits), and advocating for abstinence-only education. 

In the early 1990’s, women convicted of child abuse or drug use were given the choice to either receive a long-acting reversible contraceptive (LARC) such as an IUD, or be sentenced to jail time.  In this case the LARC that was offered was a contraceptive called Norplant that was inserted into one’s arm and effective for a few years.  As this article states, “Norplant became a lightning rod for racially coded population control even before it hit the shelves.”  The implant was trialed in China, India, and Brazil, and only two days after it was approved, an op-ed was published in the Philadelphia Enquirer that specifically called for Black women on welfare to receive this device.  Thirteen states introduced legislation offering welfare recipients financial incentives for receiving Norplant.  There was significant opposition to these bills from Black and Indigenous activists, and the Native American Women’s Reproductive Rights Coalition ran a full-page ad in a South Dakota paper arguing that Norplant use should be a choice not tied to welfare benefits.  Norplant was taken off the market in 2002 as claims mounted over the company’s failure to inform patients of the device’s side effects. In case you think the idea of using birth control to incentivize folx to minimize their substance use has lost steam, check out Project Prevention.

(Tamar Lewin, “Implanted Birth Control Device Renews Debate Over Forced Contraception,” New York Times, 1991)

This situation is politically nuanced, as contraception access did also at times meet the needs and desires of women in these communities, who were at the forefront of leadership and advocacy in demanding that this access occur in equitable and safe ways.   

The mainstream terminology around “choice” reflects another aspect of Whiteness in the movement – choosing to terminate a pregnancy, choosing contraception, choosing when to have a family.  I even think I used this framing in the last blog post.  Wanda would call that my oppressive muscle memory.  The idea to center the mainstream White-led movement on “choice” came in the 1970s during Roe v. Wade, when liberal White women decided to pacify the message for political gain – to make it more amenable for conservatives (that backfired).  This narrow construction also reflects neoliberalism and the prioritizing of the individual’s control over their own body, while neglecting the social and political context in which these choices occur. 

White feminists in the reproductive rights movement have not necessarily taken the time to see how their internalized racism has led to the continuation of oppressive policies in the name of their reproductive freedom.   For example, mainstream White feminist groups did not join women of color in demanding guidelines for sterilizations because it did not align with their experience, in which they struggled to receive voluntary sterilizations – often needing to persuade committees of doctors to perform the procedure.  White women in the movement saw these guidelines as interfering with their choice and with their personal doctor/patient relationship.  We hear about this relationship a lot in the abortion rights demands too.  And yes, the right to abortion is important but the “choice” flattens the reality that many Black, brown, and Indigenous folx face – folx who often aren’t believed by doctors, who live in places that experience more environmental degradation, higher levels of institutionalized and systemic violence at the hands of law enforcement, and for whom obtaining an abortion is not as simple as making an appointment. This is not to say it is this simple for all White women – this is to say that framing the issue around “choice” is very limiting, especially for communities of color.  

Given the limitations of the mainstream perspective on reproductive rights and autonomy, Black, Indigenous, and other activists of color framed these issues in their own way, utilizing their own leadership structures and organizing efforts.  In 1983, the National Conference on Black Women’s Health Issues took place at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.  This conference, led by Byllye Avery and other activists and dedicated to the memory of Fannie Lou Hamer, gave way to the National Black Women’s Health Project – currently the National Black Women’s Health Imperative (see the above video), the first national women of color group with a focus on reproductive rights.  

Many of the Black women on the planning committee for that conference attended a predominantly White 1994 reproductive rights conference in Chicago, where the Clinton administration was building reproductive health policy in a way that was mostly concerned with avoiding or limiting Republican opposition.  Twelve Black feminists attended: Toni N. Bond Leonard, Terri James, Cynthia Newbille, Winnette P. Willis, Rev. Alma Crawford, Bisola Marignay, Loretta Ross, Kim Youngblood, Evelyn S. Field, Cassandra McConnell, Elizabeth Terry, and “Able” Mable Thomas.  Seeing the inadequacies of this approach, they caucused separately. During that meeting, these women coined the term “reproductive justice” as “the human right to maintain bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”  This approach addresses the personal, the communal, and the institutional – as Dorothy Roberts writes in The 1619 Project – it also has roots in the “premise that policies to protect Black women and girls must address intimate and institutional violence simultaneously and can’t rely on police officers and prisons, which themselves unjustly target Black women” (page 60).  The founders of the RJ movement, who named themselves Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice, then published a full-page statement in the Washington Post and Roll Call, seen below.

 (The full page ad taken out in the Washington Post and Roll Call)

Loretta Ross, an RJ founder, was herself a survivor of forced sterilization.  In 1997, she and other WADRJ members founded SisterSong: Women of Color Reproductive Justice Coalition, whose mission is to amplify the voices of Black and Indigenous women in the RJ movement.  They offer a variety of nationwide programming, including partnering with mainstream, White-led groups, providing trainings, breaking taboos around sexuality, and working on policy and comprehensive sexuality education.  I encourage you to take a look at their work.

 Consider the trajectory from the activism and stories of Celia and Frances Thompson, to Fannie Lou Hamer, Elaine Riddick and the Relf sisters, Loretta Ross, Byllye Avery and the WADRJ – and the many, many others in between.  These issues have impacted Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American Pacific Islander, immigrant communities, and communities with disabilities as well.  I encourage you to take a look at Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri’s work, Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, and this article on the intersections between reproductive justice and disability justice.  Think about what it entails for the actual centering of these experiences in this movement and what the de-centering of White voices in this field means – including how it might look for us as individuals to respect and believe in the leadership of others. 

Additional Resources:

Check out these incredibly detailed and informative resource guides provided by University of Michigan and the website Race and Medicine.