Being a racist doesn’t make you Margaret Sanger

The case of Laura Stevens, a 76 year old woman who was arrested for trespassing after she started giving unsolicited birth control advice to a Latina mother of six could just be brushed off as a case of a racist old woman failing to mind her own business. That’s certainly what I would have done. That is, until Salt Lake Tribune columnist Rebecca Walsh called her a modern day Margaret Sanger. No, she wasn’t referring to the ugly fact that Sanger held a lot of racist ideologies and supported eugenics– Walsh meant that as a compliment, as if Stevens actually is a reproductive rights activist. Seriously. You have to read it to believe it.

Stevens is a clumsy heroine to champion in a politically correct world. She says what most of us are thinking. She speaks out loud things that are whispered – about welfare moms and polygamists and Mormons and Catholics and immigrants – between close friends and family (the ones who won’t judge us). She’s easy to label racist or senile. But maybe she’s just a pragmatist.

The mother of one and grandmother of none worries about the world’s population. She figures America’s growing immigrant population will drain the country’s resources. She quotes population statistics: 6.6 billion people in the world; nearly 80 million new babies added each year. And demographic studies: the higher a parent’s education and income, the smaller the family.

“It’s poor people who have child after child,” she says. “If we could take care of them, that’s fine. But these are children born into a world of need and want. It breaks my heart.”

So first things first: I do not talk about– or “whisper” about– how welfare moms and immigrants have too many babies. Not even to my “close friends” who won’t “judge” me. In fact, I would like to think that my friends are the kind of people who, if I did start spouting that kind of racist, classist garbage, would judge me and would also stop being my friend. Just because you happen to be politically-correct in public and racist in private, Rebecca Walsh, doesn’t mean that the rest of us all behave in the same way.

As for the concerns of “population control” and being worried about all of those poor babies that the government doesn’t give a shit about, kiss my ass. If anyone cared about all those poor welfare babies, we wouldn’t be punishing their mothers for having them by refusing to increase their welfare payments or trying to cut them off entirely. Uh, not to mention the fact that Stevens had absolutely no clue if this woman was actually on welfare.

Population control? The world is over-populated. However, I have never and most likely never will support a program specifically designed to control the world’s population. Why? Because these programs directly target and restrict the reproductive choices of women of color. Everyone wants to criticize women of color because they statistically have larger families than whites. But no one wants to criticize the rich white woman getting expensive IVF treatments to have a biological baby when there are millions of children already born and in need of a home. Population control programs don’t cut off access to white women and women of color equally. They stick Norplant in Black women’s arms without their full understanding as to what is happening and they sterilize Latina women who “consent” during labor. These programs devalue the reproductive autonomy of women of color while assuming that middle class whites are smart enough to make their own choices. There is a strong difference between educating women without access about their reproductive options and providing them with the resources and purposely trying to reduce specific types of population growth. It’s racism dressed up in pro-choice ideology. Killing the Black Body is an excellent reference on the matter.

Most important of all, though, in regards to this particular case, in condoning Stevens actions, Walsh is also condoning the assumption that this Latina woman needed birth control advice. If that isn’t racist, I don’t know what is. This woman very well may have wanted six children. She may want more. She may have been pregnant when Stevens approached her. Or, she could also be on birth control. She could have had her tubes tied after her last birth. She could be a nurse, or a fucking doctor for all Stevens knew. But no, she saw a Latina woman with six kids and assumed that she must be some poor ignorant soul who has never heard of a condom. The very real need to educate POC communities about reproductive health and contraception has nothing to do with singling out and attacking specific women of color.

But Walsh thanks her for this. Look, Sanger was, unfortunately, a woman with a lot of highly reprehensible views. But she also did a lot of good. She was an activist who single-handedly made a huge difference in our political landscape, and for that she deserves our gratitude along with our disapproval. Sanger set up clinics, she lobbied Congress, she worked directly to educate women. In contrast, Stevens is a racist nutjob on a bus. And Walsh is apparently a racist nutjob with a pen.

And I sure as hell do not want anymore racist nutjobs associated with the reproductive rights movement. I’m not sure who these two women are with, but they’re sure as hell not with us.