Jill writes about how anti-choice groups are trying to improve their reputation in black communities, and how this is unlikely to work due to the fact that most anti-choice groups are dominated by racist crackers. As Jill details, these efforts tend to be crippled at the outset by the anti-choice assumption that black women are stupid. Also, anti-choicer are the brains behind the efforts to imprison women for “child abuse” for using drugs during their pregnancies, the enforcement of which almost exclusively targets black women, especially in the South, and are functionally white supremacist and send the signal to black women that their attempts to give birth in peace will be met with resistance from a white-dominated state.
But anti-choicers think they have their weapon—they can selectively misquote Margaret Sanger to make it seem that she was trying to wipe out black people! Never mind that the quotes they claim are anti-black are actually the opposite and they only appear racist through the use of ellipses. The lie has legs because Sanger did associate with eugenicists, though she was never part of the race-baiting eugenics movement.
Anyway, I bring this up, because the anti-choicers who scream that abortion is racist genocide, and who “prove” it by referring to Margaret Sanger leave out one important detail, a detail that I didn’t realize until I read When Abortion Was A Crime. (The book club discussion of the book is at that link—good stuff there!) During the period of Planned Parenthood’s history where Sanger was associating with eugenicists, the organization was adamantly anti-abortion. Women would come to Planned Parenthood seeking abortion and be sent off with information to prevent the next pregnancy and some words of pity that this time it was too late.
In other words, when anti-choicers point to Sanger’s association with eugenics, and trying to imply that people “like her” were eugenicists, they are saying that people who oppose abortion rights are eugenicists.
Planned Parenthood’s historical opposition to abortion rights (which was only overturned after feminist activists made it clear how important abortion rights are) does seem to have been some kind of marketing strategy. They deemed what they did “birth control”, because that tends to be a more user-friendly term than “contraception”, but the latter is really what they meant. However, they soon found out that when most people heard “birth control”, they tended to think about the kind of birth control they were most familiar with, which was early term abortions, which were regarded mostly as restoring menstruation. A good deal of Leslie Reagan’s research about how people regarded abortion came from letters to Planned Parenthood requesting abortions, requests that were always turned down. Planned Parenthood realized they wouldn’t get very far promoting contraception if their entire customer base just wanted abortion, so they had to adamantly come out against abortion so people would then ask, “So what is it then that you do?”
But that’s just conjecture. The fact of the matter is that when anti-choicers condemn Planned Parenthood under Margaret Sanger, they are condemning an organization that opposed abortion rights, period.
All this just goes to show that anti-choicers aren’t against just abortion and this has litte to nothing to do with “killing babies”, and everything to do with strong opposition to women exacting any control whatsoever over their reproductive lives. The anti-choice hatred of Planned Parenthood doesn’t really make sense until you realize they oppose any kind of birth control, and especially any kind that focuses on female control of it. Most Planned Parenthoods don’t perform abortions, but that doesn’t stop anti-choicers from hating it, because it isn’t really about abortion. Planned Parenthood is a symbol of female control over our own bodies, and a symbol of the pro-choice belief that all women deserve that control, even if they aren’t wealth enough to obtain it privately.
63 Responses to “One interesting tidbit from history”
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Huh, it’s weird to think that Planned Parenthood used to not do abortions. I should read that book.
Exactly. And the anti-choicers are more and more veiling this desire to control women as a desire to protect women, which is both ridiculous and insulting. We saw this in South Dakota, where much of the support for the (ultimately futile) push to ban abortion concerned protecting women from the supposed negative consequences of abortion. and it continues.
The idea that banning abortion protects women really shows how conservatives don’t want to roll back the clock to the 1950s so much as the Victorian era. In the 50s, the rationale behind the ban on abortion was that women were wicked sluts who wanted to get abortion to cover up their “crime”. That was ascribing more agency to women than Victorians were really comfortable with, and Victorians tended to think that women who got abortions were hapless victims being abused by perverse men.
Very interesting indeed.
I skimmed Jill’s article and found this to be worth repeating:
“The method of whipping pregnant slaves that was used throughout the South vividly illustrates the slaveowners’ dual interest in Black women as both workers and childbearers. Slaveowners forced women to lie face down in a depression in the ground while they were whipped. This procedure allowed the masters to protect the fetus while abusing the mother. It serves as a powerful metaphor for the evils of a fetal protection policy that denies the humanity of the mother. ”
Jill points out that this sums up the entire anti choice agenda. And, I agree.
I saw Dorothy Roberts (who Jill is drawing on there) speak at the NAPW conference, and she is just awesome. I ran out and bought her book immediately. I haven’t read it yet, because I’m trying to pace out my books on reproductive rights with other books, lest I become overly single-minded, but yeah, she’s brilliant. There’s simply not enough historical understanding in the mainstream of black people’s lives in this country, and that ignorance gap makes it all the easier to exploit racial tensions in all sorts of directions.
I second the Dorothy Roberts love. Her book “Killing the Black Body” is the bible of race and reproduction. It’s worth reading if you’re at all interested in reproductive justice, welfare law, and race in the U.S.
Recently I went on a company trip for some additional training. I ended up on a four drive each way with a coworker that is on the opposite end of the political spectrum from me. At one point on the return trip we did end up discussing politics.
He was of the opinion that “Abortion should be illegal so that women have to deal with the consequences of their actions just like murderers should be executed as a consequence of their actions. If you don’t want a baby, don’t have sex.” I asked him what about if contraception fails clearly the couple was then taking steps to avoid a pregnancy. To which he reiterated the “if you don’t want a baby, don’t have sex.” mantra. I tried pointing out to him in several ways that we all take steps to limit the consequences of our actions for activities that we enjoy or just want to partake in. We were currently wearing seatbelts to provide a measure of protection in case of an accident. We don’t ignore people who have unhealthy diets when they have heart attacks. We don’t ignore smokers who develop cancer. We don’t leave people to die in accidents for driving unsafely. I also attempted to point out the rights we have are not solely innumerated by the first 8 amendments. But I might as well have been talking to a brick wall, he would not budge or even acknowledge my position as having any merit.
Considering how he stated his position, his tone of voice, gesturing, and his opinion in general I got the strong impression that he really does want to punish women for having sex. I was very surprised that the father of three daughters has such a low opinion of the agency of his wife and children. Has anyone had any success in breaking down this wall?
which was early term abortions, which were regarded mostly as restoring menstruation.
IIRC, in The Cider House Rules, it’s referred to as “ending menstrual suppression”. Anyone got a copy of that handy?
CJS: Ask him to honestly answer the question, “What if one of your daughters wanted an abortion at the age of 14?” Would he force his own daughter to do something she’s not ready for? Put the kid up for adoption? Force her to raise a child while still a child herself?
Different when it’s one of your own. But of course, that’s something the pro-forced-pregnancy crowd doesn’t like to admit.
i get men like that to at least acknowledge my existence as a moral being by using the same body language and vocal tone as they do. it either works and they start engaging me more, or it pisses them off and makes them really whiny and even more patriarchal and hostile, which can be fun.
maybe not in a long car ride though …..
Yes, it really illuminates how the anti-choicers see women (especially black women) as passive vessels, objects who never act in their own interest. In this particular universe, women just stand there like water jars, ready to be filled and emptied as need be.
The best answer is; “If you think African American women are having too many abortions, then why aren’t you helping out with child care centers, college grants, health benefits, and anti-discrimation laws?
CJS- The wall you are attempting to break down is reinforced by VERY strong material: The full faith and credit of a Patriarchal society.
That gentleman (and I do use the term loosely) that you were riding with does not see women as actual persons.
Did he even bring up the other side of the coin? ie-Should men quit complaining about having to pay child support because they had sex?
He doesn’t believe in the “agency” of his wife and daughters because they are his possessions. This is the essence of Patriarcy.
During the period of Planned Parenthood’s history where Sanger was associating with eugenicists, the organization was adamantly anti-abortion. Women would come to Planned Parenthood seeking abortion and be sent off with information to prevent the next pregnancy and some words of pity that this time it was too late.
I would really like to bring this up with someone I often get into debates with. Does the book provide a source for this information? I know I’ll be asked to show my sources and I don’t know if the book itself will suffice. Thanks.
Taken a step or two we could incorporate
A diagnostic code called, say ‘Menstrual stasis’
And advanced then as medical/surgical ‘condition’ and indication
Why then….
[Didn’t know that about Planned Parenthood, either.
There IS Eiphany, Redemption is possible!]
I can see exactly why so little is known about Black people’s experiences judging by the reactions from the people on this forum.
Sarah, from what I can tell, Reagan used primary sources, all internal and external communications from Planned Parenthood about their opposition to abortion. The book is exhaustively researched. You can find it free here. The extensive notes will point you to all necessary source material.
Concerned Parent, oh he would pop. I get the feeling that his family is very sheltered. He about flew off the handle when he found out that I occasionally drink and that many years ago I had smoked pot.
I asked him about his family the first time we met and it went like this.
Me: Good to meet you. So you’re married, do you have any children?
Him: I have three daughters, one of each
Me: One of each?
Him: Yeah… a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead.
Me: Oh… uhhh okay.
Rachel, I don’t think I could use that method to strengthen my point seeing as how I am a man. But maybe I could finagle it so he has to work on a project led by one of our female engineers. That could be very entertaining.
Uhura, no we didn’t touch on that. But I believe he would probably have said that they should get married. At least that’s my impression based on some of his other positions.
I suppose I could avoid discussions of politics with him but… nah… I’m an instigator.
Oh, dear Christ, CJS. That comment from your co-worker re: his daughters just about made throw up in my mouth.
Thanks for the tip, Amanda.
Sarah,
Unfortunately, this persons attitude toward his daughters is not at all uncommon. It’s basically all the diversity that he can tolerate.
“Him: I have three daughters, one of each
Me: One of each?
Him: Yeah… a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead.”
Wow. That’s utterly creeptastic.
“one of each”
…dear god.
CJS:
You can’t break down another’s wall. People can only do that on their own.
You can ask some probing questions, like “so sex is so meaningless that it should only be done for reproduction?” and such, but you can’t change another person’s mind. Only the other person can do that.
I wonder if he would demand a larger dowry for the blonde.
Perhaps the best way to talk with the anti choice crowd is to use the bible. Talk with them about the wisdom of Solomon–Solomon is confronted by two women who both say a baby is theirs, and Solomon lets the women decide, who keeps the baby (it has always seemed to me that the women in the story are one woman who is undecided, but in any case, Solomon, who Jesus said was wise, let the women choose
Also there is a bit in Numbers 5;11 to the end of the chapter where women go to the temple, and if the are impure they (apparently) get an abortion after drinking the dust of the temple floor–
good luck
Well, blondes do have more fun…
That story is pretty bad. But that’s why its risky to discuss politics with coworkers. It becomes extremely difficult to continue working with someone that has expressed views like that to you.
As long as i am in a rantin’ mood let me point out that An Anti choice status is Anti Freemarket–it closes down small businesses–Anti Small Government–it requires policing judgement and punishment that are not free, while letting the free market work requires none of these. It was not part of the platform of the paleaoconservatives–who actually wanted smaller govt. it was taken up by the neocons once Mr. Falwell told them that fundamentalists would come out to vote if the neocons put it into their platform.
For their part richer conservatives didn’t mind because banning abortion is only banning abortion for someone who can’t afford a plane ticket to Sweden. This is why neocons are “prolife” on the abortion issue–they can afford a ticket–and tell you that life is sacred, but become “antilife” when they talk about the death penalty–
h (sorry about the rant factor)
Seconding John Palmer. I find the Socratic method a very handy debate/education technique. Asking questions that make you think really goes a whole lot further than preaching. Even suggesting that the person go back to their trusted sources (the Bible, their teachers, their parents, etc.) often helps them build discrepancy between what they have believed in the past and what they observe now.
I work daily with African American (and other WOC and white) women struggling at the bottom of the food chain (homeless women). Let me tell you, it takes strength and perserverence down here to take control of your own reproduction. Condoms are free, but gaining the will to insist that they are used every time is not, and neither is gaining the respect or power from the man who is the potential impregnator.
Restricting reproductive rights, whether by outlawing abortion or codifying the number of children one can have, is about authoritarian control.
… to be clear, the reason it is difficult for women down here to control their reproduction is both institutional (no resources available) and patriarchal (internalized and external oppression). I know a few who do, and do so well. I know several others who want to, and can’t. It makes me rage against the machine.
[…] Amanda has a searing post about anti-choicers and they’re attempts at outreach to ethnic minorities. She points out that anti-choice attacks on Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger use highly selective misquotations of Sanger, but in doing so they reveal their real purpose: All this just goes to show that anti-choicers aren’t against just abortion and this has litte to nothing to do with “killing babiesâ€?, and everything to do with strong opposition to women exacting any control whatsoever over their reproductive lives. The anti-choice hatred of Planned Parenthood doesn’t really make sense until you realize they oppose any kind of birth control, and especially any kind that focuses on female control of it. Most Planned Parenthoods don’t perform abortions, but that doesn’t stop anti-choicers from hating it, because it isn’t really about abortion. Planned Parenthood is a symbol of female control over our own bodies, and a symbol of the pro-choice belief that all women deserve that control, even if they aren’t wealth enough to obtain it privately. […]
Condoms are free, but gaining the will to insist that they are used every time is not, and neither is gaining the respect or power from the man who is the potential impregnator.
This dynamic is exactly why anti-choicers hate the pill more than anything. It basically does an end run around a situation where a man and woman are naked and in bed, he has an erection and more social power and she has to figure out how to talk him into having sex not in the way that he’d like (i.e., with a condom or an interruption for her to insert a diaphram). To depend on every woman to be able to negotiate this rigged game every time is ridiculous, so the pill simply goes around the situation.
Mmm, no, that’s not the story. In that tale, two women were in dispute over who was the real mother of a baby in their household. Solomon’s proposed solution was to cut the baby in half. The woman who falsely claimed that the baby was hers thought that was a fair resolution while the real mother rescinded her claim to save her child’s life. Solomon, being the wisest king evah, gave the baby to the real mother.
Erika,
Could we agree that Solomon doesn’t make a law forbidding the women to control their choice???
h
also could you check out the Numbers 5 thing and tell me what you think.
i just got back from a Planned Parenthood, coincidentally enough. i was there for an IUD insertion, but since i have a wonky uterus, i had to go to their surgical site. the receptionist warned me about protesters when i made the appointment, and gave me the standard do-not-engage advice. i walked into the clinic in the company of my husband, ‘cause he drove me there. all of the heckling and hassling was directed at *him*, not me. jeers, shouts, demands that he “act like a real man”, “step up to the plate”, to “do your duty and take responsibility” — and all of it was coming from middle-aged pudgy white dudes. there was one female protester there, a meek-looking college-aged girl, who said not a word and didn’t even have a sign. the dudes, though, were relentless.
i did actually yell back at them, mostly to see if i’d even get a response, but no dice. they were like Y-chromosome-seeking missiles. actual reply from head protest-dude: “not you, we’re talking to HIM!”
so that’s about the level of belief in female agency you’re dealing with there.
Ugh. So poor ppl or ppl who don’t want children shouldn’t be allowed to have sex?!! this is really stupid, especially since medical science has given us the abililty to have sex and NOT get pregnant, why shouldn’t we use it? (i say this as a childfree poor person, who has lots of sex.)
so he’s only had sex 3 times i presume?
IIRC, in the early part of the 20th century it was actually considered to be more feminist to be anti-abortion, given the dangers of it at the time and the shadiness of the doctors involved. Don’t forget, these were the days prior to antibiotics (which didn’t come along until the 1940s), so abortion was a potentially life-threatening operation. Even if you didn’t die outright from blood loss, any kind of infection could kill you.
An early writer/director named Lois Weber did an interesting (silent) film called Where Are My Children? that basically condemns the upper classes for taking abortion too lightly. It’s not PC given how the world has changed, but it is interesting.
Anyway, creepy coworkers aside. Ahhh good old quote mining and ellipses. Nothing advances a position for the glorious CCR like dishonesty.
Don’t count on that ticket to Sweden. Swedish abortion law only allows abortion for Swedish citizens and permanent residents. We’re working to change that, as a way to give back to the Polish women.
so he’s only had sex 3 times i presume? - casey
I imagine the conversations at his household:
Mrs. C: So what are we then?
Mr. C.: Protestant, and fiercely proud of it.
CJS -
Wonder how long it would take him to file for divorce if his wife stopped having sex with him. Permanently. After all, 3 kids is enough according to a lot of women.
CJS: Ask him to honestly answer the question, “What if one of your daughters wanted an abortion at the age of 14?� Would he force his own daughter to do something she’s not ready for? Put the kid up for adoption? Force her to raise a child while still a child herself?
Different when it’s one of your own. But of course, that’s something the pro-forced-pregnancy crowd doesn’t like to admit.
I dunno–I know of women who, when pregnant as young teens, were forced by their parents to go through the pregnancies and give up the children for adoption. It was seen as a just punishment for their behavior, almost. And some girls are deathly afraid of going to their parents if they were pregnant, because there’s a good chance they’ll get the crap kicked out of them and/or kicked out of the house.
Mrs. C: So what are we then?
Mr. C.: Protestant, and fiercely proud of it.
He can buy a french tickler and put it on the end of his willy, if he wants to. That’s freedom, baby!…
Therese Noran
Thanks for the info–
Let me offer a bumpersticker motto “If you can’t choose, you can’t choose life”
Perhaps more sneaky is “What did Jesus say about abortion?”
h
Sheelzebub: Yeah, could be if it were to happen to real. But this is giving him a hypothetical, mostly because his answer to the question would certainly provide more ammunition to use against him.
And for parents who do that, what kind of horrific message are you sending to your child?
Parent: “Children are G-d’s punishment for having sex.”
Child: “Does that include me?”
Parent: “… Go to your room.”
“…they can selectively misquote Margaret Sanger to make it seem that she was trying to wipe out black people…”
Like you were saying: “lying is coercion”
Mnemosyne wrote, “IIRC, in the early part of the 20th century it was actually considered to be more feminist to be anti-abortion, given the dangers of it at the time and the shadiness of the doctors involved. Don’t forget, these were the days prior to antibiotics (which didn’t come along until the 1940s), so abortion was a potentially life-threatening operation. Even if you didn’t die outright from blood loss, any kind of infection could kill you.”
I don’t know about the feminist party line on abortion from that time, but you’re absolutely right that it was dangerous.
When the laws banning abortion were passed, they were passed because that kind of surgery, without anaesthesia, by a surgeon who didn’t wash his hands, was likely to kill you through infection if you didn’t die of the initial shock and agony. It was considered an assault by the doctor against the woman.
When the Supreme Court finally legalized it again, it was because Sarah Weddington proved that medicine had advanced so much that hospital-based abortion was actually safer than hospital-based birth.
Mnemo — i saw a play recently, a revival of a rarely-produced german play from the turn of the last century, where the major action of the plot was that two teenagers have sex, the girl gets pregnant, her mother decides she’ll have an abortion, and she dies in the process.
all because the adults in the play fear sex and don’t want the teenagers to know about it. the “moral” of the play is basically that proper sex education is vital, if you don’t want the more repressive parents going ape-shit and sending their daughters to their death.
all because the adults in the play fear sex and don’t want the teenagers to know about it. the “moral� of the play is basically that proper sex education is vital, if you don’t want the more repressive parents going ape-shit and sending their daughters to their death.
Debate about sex education was HUGE in the early part of this century because, in those pre-antibiotics days, syphilis would kill you in a long, slow, and lingering death. Plus a syphilitic woman can pass the bacterium on to her child and cause a whole host of congenital problems, especially blindness. Ibsen’s play Ghosts caused a HUGE tumult when it was first produced, and it’s still pretty startling today.
That’s what pisses me off about the anti-sex crowd. We know that keeping secrets about sex is deadly. It kills people. Not just the people having sex, but their children, too. And yet, somehow, these people are still convinced that maybe this time it will work.
It’s pretty amazing the range of silent films that were made dealing with social problems of the time (and our time, still). A really fascinating book about it is Kevin Brownlow’s Behind the Mask of Innocence: Sex, Violence, Crime: Films of Social Conscience in the Silent Era.
The play is “Spring Awakening” (Frühlings Erwachen - English study notes, including a summary, here) by Frank Wedekind. It’s good but depressing.
yeah, though the revival i saw was kind of annoying — they turned it into a rather self-important “Rock Opera”, and at least half of the songs were teh suck.
also i have to say the boys’ chunk of the plot did nothing for me. all the girls in the play are dealing with these huge issues. two are being sexually abused by adults (one is being abused by a parent, the other, i forget), one of whom runs away from home to the big city to become a bohemian artist muse because, hey, better to be raped by cool drunken artists and poets than your father. it’s actually amazing, for a play written 100 years ago by a man, how incredibly REAL and relevant the girls’ stories are, even now. but the boys are pretty much just worried about flunking out of school. maybe this was really controversial 100 years ago, but oy vey, watching “Tortured” broadway actors screech shrill and self-congratulatory “rock” songs about an issue with such low stakes…
i was like, “but what’s going to happen to that other girl…?”
Nice try, put Margaret Sanger was about as racist and anti-black (with abortion as the solution) as you are going to find. The ‘hurrah for abortion’ crowd may hold her us as a messiah for women’s rights, but she is a sordid and nasty rolemodel to attempt to put on some sort of pedastal. Try doing a bit of actual research on her past and beliefs.
Apparently Dave has some reading comprehension issues. Either that or he commented without having read any of the original post beyond the first sentence. Maybe instead of referring to himself as ‘the Sage’ his username denotes a love of the spice.
Uhura Mar 22nd, 2007 at 1:24 pm
I can see exactly why so little is known about Black people’s experiences judging by the reactions from the people on this forum.
Uhura, could you elaborate?
It should be kept in mind that eugenics was mainstream for the majority of the 20th Century in the West as can be seen by the fact that well into the middle of the 50s, thousands of people deemed ‘mentally ill’ or ‘criminally insane” were involuntarily sterilized, even in such ‘advanced’ places like California and Sweden, to name two that come to mind.
“Three generations of morons are enough.” Oliver Wendell Homes, Jr.
With the state already involved in deciding who gets to reproduce via forced surgery, the issue of abortion begins to take on a different form back then against the way we see it today.
Oh, and FWIW Amanda, books on psychiatry and crime from the the 50s and 60s usually classify the illegal abortionist(if they aren’t a doctor getting paid under the table, of course) as a sexual sadist.
The “if you don’t want a baby, don’t have sex” mantra comes from the idea is that sexual pleasure for it’s own sake is immoral. This is, to this day, the view of the Catholic Church, and is shared by many other conservative Christians, although many of them probably don’t realize exactly what they believe or why they believe what they do.
Because they consider sexual pleasure to be immoral, implicitly or explicitly, people must be punished for their misdeeds. They emphasis preventing the immoral act (i.e. abstinence), rather than limiting the negative consequences.
And thus we see the bizarre actions of the Catholic Church when it comes to the AIDS epidemic. Catholic charitable organizations probably take care of more AIDS victims worldwide than anyone else, yet the Catholic Church’s anti-condom stance probably has done more to encourage the spread of the virus than anything else.
This is why we see people who oppose abortion opposing policies that will reduce abortion. Planned Parenthood always was and still is right about this - it is better to prevent an unwanted pregnancy from being conceived than to abort it. Yet, in the real world, abstinence based education, and opposition to family planning funding, and perhaps most importantly, indifference to the social and economic status of women, will lead to more abortion.
It should be kept in mind that eugenics was mainstream for the majority of the 20th Century in the West as can be seen by the fact that well into the middle of the 50s, thousands of people deemed ‘mentally ill’ or ‘criminally insane� were involuntarily sterilized, even in such ‘advanced’ places like California and Sweden, to name two that come to mind.
One of the defenses of German eugenics laws at the Nuremberg trials was that they were based on American laws.
It didn’t work for the defendants, but after WWII, eugenics fell out of favor in the US.
Mnemosyne and Rozasharn,
I suggest you read the book Amanda tried to get us to read for this week, When Abortion Was a Crime by Lesley Reagan.
It’s quite true that abortion in a pre-antibiotics age was riskier than it has to be today–just as birth is, in principle, safer today as well. But there are other variables than the general state of medical technology to consider. In fact, while folk methods were both risky and less reliable, and state-of-the-art medical abortion techniques were appallingly risky compared to what is theoretically available today, the actual risks women faced if they chose abortion were greatly dependent on how well accepted the practice was in fact which was not always according to theory. MDs were able to criminalize abortion in the latter part of the 19th century but were mainly interested at that time in taking turf away from folk practitioners; middle class and upper class women were in fact generally able to get quiet abortions from their doctor, since the law allowed for “therapeutic” abortions and MDs very commonly interpreted that to include social considerations. Working class women were often of some ethnicity or other–African-american, or immigrants from Europe–who continued to visit midwives, and they too offered abortions. When either did so, there was backup in case something went wrong.
To be sure, a lot of Reagan’s data comes from cases where something did go wrong, and when it did the law tended to involve itself, by shaming the women and their associates by publicizing their private tragedies.
But the real dark ages for dangerous abortions in this country, according to Reagan, was actually the post-WWII era, when antibiotics were quite available–but safe abortions, not so much, due to the more effective cracking down on professional abortion providers and fanatical efforts to close the “therapeutic” loophole by disallowing social considerations, which was accomplished by taking the right to decide away from individual MDs and subjecting the decision to public scrutiny.
I would not dispute that women are basically better off with the best of modern medical technology at their disposal, but the variable of social support for women’s right to decide is even more important. I argued over at that thread that actually the horrible dialectic of the battle to criminalize abortion has resulted in making public and acceptable women’s voices on behalf of their sexuality and their right to choose, which in theory anyway was repressed in favor of either specific men or a patriachial society as a whole to decide for them even in the best of times before. The best situation then is one where women are respected as the deciders, and good technology is available, but if we have to choose between them I think the former is better, since good technology is useless if society is determined to punish women for transgressing. Which was the situation in the 1950s, even more so than before.
Dave, considering that I’ve actually read some of her papers and historically accurate histories that rely on her work, and you’ve only read highly ellipsed quotes from people who actively want to ban contraception, I think that maybe you’re projecting.
Just a little.
Actually, the image of the black pregnant woman being beaten would be a good way to combat the pregnancy crisis centers mentioned in the other article.
A picture of that with “The fetus was more important than the mother to them, too” in huge block letters on a billboard right next to these places should do the trick.
If these crisis pregnancy centers can use horrific videos of aborted fetuses and mislead the women watching them to think these fetuses are younger than they actually are, then sometimes you gotta fight fire with fire.
At least that would be historically accurate (if a bit distasteful) and not lying to women to coerce and manipulate them into having children they can’t afford to feed.
The point of this article is to say that when anti-choicers point to this Sanger quote about “word getting out”, they are taking her out of context, which is true. They are twisting her words to make it sound like abortion is a scheme to hold the black population down.
What isn’t taken out of context, and what I am surprised to hear Amanda defend, are the large volume of Sanger material that promotes racism, classism, etc. I recommend reading her Wiki page as a good starting point.
Of course, this thread is not about defending Sanger’s legacy, I was just surprised to see it go that way, especially from Amanda.
Wow. I had NO IDEA I was a racist cracker! Who knew?
Well, I did.
And sure, Grill. She was racist and classist and all those other things that were typical to a middle class white progressive in her day. Also, anti-abortion. Racism, classism, and opposition to abortion—they tend to be intertwined. As Planned Parenthood evolved and grew better at its mission and abandoned some of the intrinsic classism of its stance, they….became pro-choice on abortion.
Things progess. People get past their internalized sexism, racism, and classism, and become, in the process, more pro-choice. Fascinating, no?