Comments on: Anti-Choicers Target Women of Color: How Should Pro-Choicers Respond?

By: Weekly News Round-Up « Women’s Health News

Weekly News Round-Up « Women’s Health News — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:35:44 +0000

[...] Jill at The Unnecesarean is also talking about Race and the Rights of Childbearing Women, as isCara at the Curvature. [...]

By: Politicalguineapig

Politicalguineapig — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:42:58 +0000

Ryan: I’m not sure that they think POC are more gullible than other groups, but POC are seen as more religious than other groups, and are thus seen as an easier target.
(It does seem that the more religious one is, the more gullible one is, but that might be just my own bias.)
To tie into the topic, this stereotype might be one of the reasons why pro-choicers don’t look for allies among POC. Most pro-choice people are used to seeing religious people as adversaries rather than allies.

By: Cara

Cara — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 03:22:59 +0000

For real, kaninchenzero. Like I said, there’s a whole lot more ugliness in repro rights history. I didn’t even explicitly start on forced sterilization, which is a huge one …

By: kaninchenzero

kaninchenzero — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:06:58 +0000

It’s not as well documented as the Norplant mess (my white ex had no problem getting hers removed when she started having unpleasant effects from it) but there’s a similar story with Depo-Provera and Latina women. Who, too often, were dosed with it without their knowledge, never mind their consent. They’d have had religious objections if they’d known about it. Those weren’t valid. None of their objections would have been valid.

People of color are all too aware of the not at all distant history of reproductive injustices perpetrated against them. Pro-choice activists — mainstream white feminists period — need to acknowledge that. (Even if it was only so they’d maybe stop saying “Oh we aren’t racist, we were never racist!” because that shit is seriously fucking annoying.) And then they need to do a whole pile of shutting up and listening. Accompanied by a bunch more shutting up while the non-white people with uteruses are talking. And then some apologizing would be good. Somewhere in there — like back at the beginning — they need to start seriously advocating for the reproductive justice concerns people of color have already very thoughtfully raised and are available everywhere. They don’t even need to ask anyone what they are; they just need to Google that shit.

I’m the reason we can’t have nice stuff, aren’t I?

By: links for 2010-02-24 « Embololalia

links for 2010-02-24 « Embololalia — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:10:57 +0000

[...] Anti-Choicers Target Women of Color: How Should Pro-Choicers Respond? : The Curvature Because while, no, it’s not true that Planned Parenthood wants to “kill black babies,” it is true that the mainstream U.S. reproductive rights movement has not always been friendly to black women, or had their best interests at heart. Margaret Sanger may not have been the militant eugenicist and racist that she is often portrayed as, but the fact is that she did support some forms of eugenics, which inevitably have a racist impact. While it’s not true that pro-choicers want to coerce certain women into abortion (that would be far from supporting choice), it is true that the more privileged and influential among us have traditionally ignored the rights that would allow many women to carry desired pregnancies to term, and the rights that would allow marginalized women to raise their own children. (tags: reproductiverights abortion feminism intersectionality usa african-americans) [...]

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:17:00 +0000

I think these anti-choice efforts wrongly assume that POC are more gullible than other groups. These people aren’t being conned somehow; these are adequately considered decisions. These choices women make have life changing consequences. It’s ridiculous people find their passing opinions about an ad more important than the individual choices women make.

By: amandaw

amandaw — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:36:38 +0000

Y – e – s.

White feminists should stop the “but it’s not raaaacist per se” dance, and start confronting the fact that yes, the mainstream pro-choice movement has had both passively and actively racist attitudes, policies and patterns of behavior, and that women of color have legitimate reasons to be distrustful of them.

The proper response is not to hand-wave away WOC’s concerns saying “there is no good reason to distrust us!” That’s exactly what forced-birth pro-lifers tell women, too. And both sides have done some sickeningly cruel shit to women in certain marginalized groups. I think those women would be more likely to trust pro-choicers if they’d up-front admit that shit has happened and still happens, and work to stop it.

Then? The lying pro-lifers would be very well discredited.

Right now, neither side is credible.