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Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

The Racist History of Abortion and Midwifery Bans

https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/the-racist-history-of-abortion-and-midwifery-bans. Today’s attacks on abortion access have a long history rooted in white supremacy. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in June Medical Services v. Russo this week, it is worth reflecting on the racist origins of the anti-abortion movement in the United States, which date back to the ideologies of slavery. Just like slavery, anti-abortion efforts are rooted in white supremacy, the exploitation of Black women, and placing women’s bodies in service to men. Just like slavery, maximizing wealth and consolidating power motivated the anti-abortion enterprise. Then, just as now, anti-abortion efforts have nothing to do with saving women’s lives or protecting the interests of children. Today, a person is 14 times more likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion, and medical evidence has shown for decades that an abortion is as safe as a penicillin shot—and yet abortion remains heavily restricted in states across the country. Prior to the Civil War, abortion and contraceptives were legal in the U.S., used by Indigenous women as well as those who sailed to these lands from Europe. For the most part, the persons who performed all manner of reproductive health care were women — female midwives. Midwifery was interracial; half of the women who provided reproductive health care were Black women. Other midwives were Indigenous and white. However, in the wake of slavery’s end, skilled Black midwives represented both real competition for white men who sought to enter the practice of child delivery, and a threat to how obstetricians viewed themselves. Male gynecologists claimed midwifery was a degrading means of obstetrical care. They viewed themselves as elite members of a trained profession with tools such as forceps and other technologies, and the modern convenience of hospitals, which excluded Black and Indigenous women from practice within their institutions. History would later reveal that it was literally on the backs of Black women’s bodies that such tools were developed. Dr. Marion Sims famously wrote about his insomniac-induced “epiphanies” that stirred him to experiment on enslaved Black women, lacerating, suturing, and cutting, providing no anesthesia or pain relief. Only recently have the terrors that Black women endured through nonconsensual experimentation by gynecologists of the 19th and 20th centuries been acknowledged. Successful racist and misogynistic smear campaigns, cleverly designed for political persuasion and to achieve legal reform, described Black midwives as unhygienic, barbarous, ineffective, non-scientific, dangerous, and unprofessional. Dr. Joseph DeLee, a preeminent 20th century obstetrician and fervent opponent to midwifery, stated in a much-quoted 1915 speech, “Progress Toward Ideal Obstetrics”: The midwife is a relic of barbarism. In civilized countries the midwife is wrong, has always been wrong … The midwife has been a drag on the progress of the science and art of obstetrics. Her existence stunts the one and degrades the other. For many centuries she perverted obstetrics from obtaining any standing at all among the science of medicine … Even after midwifery was practiced by some of the most brilliant men in the profession, such practice was held opprobrious and degraded. At the root of these stereotypes were explicit efforts to destroy midwifery and promote white supremacy. As the surge of lynchings, “separate but equal” laws, police violence, and the decimation of successful Black communities during Jim Crow revealed, Black Americans post slavery suffered greatly due to white supremacy, as did Chinese and Japanese workers and their families. Indeed, the racist campaigns launched by doctors against Black midwives extended to anti-immigration legislative platforms targeted at Chinese and Japanese workers. The Page Act, which restricted Chinese women from entering the United States, is a part of this shameful legacy. This broader 20th century anti-Chinese campaign became known as “yellow peril.” DeLee and Horatio Storer urged white women to “spread their loins” across the nation, a dog whistle about the threat of too many Blacks and Asians in the U.S. Gynecologists explicitly revealed their motivations in undermining midwifery: They desired financial gains, recognition, and a monopoly. As Dr. DeLee wrote in a 1916 article published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Disease of Women & Children, “There is high art in obstetrics and that it must pay as well for it as for surgery. I will not admit that this is a sordid impulse. It is only common justice to labor, self-sacrifice, and skill.” They believed that men should be paid, but not women — particularly not Black women. To better understand racial injustice in the anti-abortion movement, remember that American hospitals barred the admission of African Americans both in terms of practice and as patients. And, the American Medical Association (AMA) barred women and Black people from membership. The AMA, founded in 1847, refused to admit Black doctors, informing them, “You come from groups and schools that admit women and that admit irregular practitioners.” For this reason, Black doctors formed the National Medical Association in 1895. In 2008, the organization issued a public apology for its active campaigns to close Black medical schools, deny Blacks membership, and other efforts to marginalize Black patients and practitioners. Gynecologists pushed women out of the field of reproductive health by lobbying state legislatures to ban midwifery and prohibit abortions. Doing so not only undercut women’s reproductive health, but also drove qualified Black women out of medical services. For these groups, there was no meaningful path to the formalized skill set DeLee claimed necessary. Abortion was an expedient way to frame their campaign to create monopolies on women’s bodies for male doctors. The American Medical Association explicitly contributed to this cause through its exclusion of women and Black people. Today, as people debate whether anti-abortion platforms benefit Black women, the clear answer is no. The U.S. leads the developed world in maternal and infant mortality. The U.S. ranks around 50th in the world for maternal safety. Nationally, for Black women, the maternal death rate is nearly four times that of white women, and 10 to 17 times worse in some states. In the wake of both Whole Woman’s Health and June Medical Services v. Russo, keep in mind that both Texas and Louisiana, where these cases originated, are considered the deadliest in the developed world for a woman to give birth. Sadly, pregnancy has become a death sentence for many in the very places that make reproductive health care access the most fraught and hard to reach. Many of these states (though not all) are former slave states, such as Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. As Black people in these states continue to fight for equal access the reproductive care they need, Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech continues to resonate. And as the Supreme Court demonstrated this week, the fight for justice in reproductive health care and equality in abortion access is far from over. The decision does not advance the equality of poor Black women — it maintains all other burdensome restrictions already in place. We have much more work to do such that not only DeLee’s words, but also his racist and exploitative viewpoints, are relegated to history.

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1. 1966 The National Organization for Women, known as NOW, was founded. On October 29, 1966, the Nation Organization for Women officially adopted their Statement of Purpose. The statement, written by Betty Friedan and Pauli Murray, expressed the organization’s main goals in addressing and fighting the unequal treatment of women in society. This 1966 document is a seminal part of the modern women’s rights movement and played an important role in inspiring more Americans to fight for gender equality. Although their Statement of Purpose was adopted in October, the feminist organization was officially founded on June 30, 1966. The statement described NOW’s purpose as “To take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.” NOW was created when its founders recognized that women needed a pressure group to combat gender discrimination, as the government agencies and recent laws to address this problem had proven ineffective. A prime example of this was the failure of the Equality Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Title VII is a federal law that prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and religion.) Employers were still discriminating against women in hiring practices and there was unequal pay for women. Secondly, NOW was also influenced by the failure of John F. Kennedy’s 1961 President’s Commission on the Status of Women, headed by Eleanor Roosevelt, to end discrimination against females in education, the workforce and Social Security. The movement was also inspired by Friedan’s 1963 book “The Feminine Mystique,” where she famously expresses her stultifying experiences as a housewife lacking other options in society beyond that domestic role. The founders of NOW hoped that their organization would help women combat discrimination in all aspects of society by lobbying and holding rallies, marches and conferences. NOW broke with previous trends for women’s organizations by including the concerns of black women in their mission. NOW has advocated for many issues they see as necessary for ensuring equality for women, including maternity leave rights in employment, child day care centers, equal job training opportunities, reproductive rights, and the prohibition of sex discrimination in the workplace.
2. La Operación - The Subversion and Portrayal of Female Agency in Latinx Reproductive Rights Widespread sterilization operation led by the United States during the 1950s and 60s in Puerto Rico. La Operación is a documentary from 1982 that shows the widespread sterilization operation led by the United States during the 1950s and 60s in Puerto Rico. Ana María García directed the film which highlights how the United States pushed for increased female sterilization in Puerto Rico. She mixes in the documentary a blend of interviews with women from different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds but the interviews are not the only focus of her work; she also incorporates scenes showing a sterilization procedure in addition to other historical and contextual parts. account from the documentary displays the same message as the propaganda above, that there are prosperity and good living associated with sterilization, based on the belief that too many kids lead to a perpetual state of destitution. These false beliefs led many women to give up their agency over their bodies and cave into getting sterilized—except they did not know all the time what they were signing up for.
3. 1960s Reproductive Justice for Latinas: Coerced, Forced, and Involuntary Sterilization By 1934, there were 67 birth control clinics operating under federal funding through Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Puerto Rican Relief Administration; in 1936, the Maternal and Childcare Health Association, a private entity, opened 23 more. A law passed the following year—Law 116—made sterilization legal and free for Puerto Rican women. Family planning clinics offering free sterilization were installed in the new factories of the industrial wave; women were encouraged to work in needlework and textile industries there, and were shown favoritism for sterilization compliance. Health officials campaigned door-to-door for sterilization throughout rural communities, too. In a dire economic situation and with few affordable alternative contraceptive methods available, the operation—or la operacion, as it was referred to locally—became commonplace. By the 1960s, about one-third of the female population had been sterilized—and many of those women hadn’t been educated about the permanency of tubal ligation.
4. 1960s Puerto Rican Women Sterilized as a "solution to poverty"
5. 1969 Redstockings Abortion Speakout n 1969, the members of the radical feminist group Redstockings were furious that legislative hearings about abortion featured male speakers discussing such a crucial women's issue. They, therefore, staged their hearing, the Redstockings abortion speak-out, in New York City on March 21, 1969. The Fight to Make Abortion Legal The abortion speak-out took place during the pre-Roe v. Wade era when abortion was illegal in the United States. Each state had its own laws about reproductive matters. It was rare if not unheard of to hear any woman speak publicly about her experience with illegal abortion. FEATURED VIDEO Roe v. Wade Supported By 70% Of Americans Before the radical feminists' fight, the movement to change U.S. abortion laws was more focused on reforming existing laws than repealing them. Legislative hearings on the issue featured medical experts and others who wanted to finesse the exceptions to abortion prohibitions. These "experts" talked about cases of rape and incest or a threat to the life or health of a mother. Feminists shifted the debate to a discussion of a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body. Disruption In February of 1969, Redstockings members disrupted a New York legislative hearing about abortion. The New York Joint Legislature Committee on the Problems of Public Health had called the hearing to consider reforms to the New York law, then 86 years old, on abortion. They roundly condemned the hearing because the "experts" were a dozen men and a Catholic nun. Of all women to speak, they thought a nun would be the least likely to have contended with the abortion issue, other than from her possible religious bias. The Redstockings members shouted and called for the legislators to hear from women who had had abortions, instead. Eventually, that hearing had to be moved to another room behind closed doors. Women Raising Their Voices The members of Redstockings had previously participated in consciousness-raising discussions. They had also drawn attention to women's issues with protests and demonstrations. Several hundred people attended their abortion speak-out in the West Village on March 21, 1969. Some women spoke about what they suffered during illegal “back-alley abortions.” Other women spoke about being unable to get an abortion and having to carry a baby to term, then have the child taken away when it was adopted. Legacy After the Demonstration More abortion speak-outs followed in other U.S. cities, as well as speak-outs on other issues in the subsequent decade. Four years after the 1969 abortion speak-out, the Roe v. Wade decision altered the landscape by repealing most abortion laws then in effect and striking down restrictions on abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy. Susan Brownmiller attended the original 1969 abortion speak-out. Brownmiller then wrote about the event in an article for the "Village Voice", "Everywoman's Abortions: 'The Oppressor Is Man.'" The original Redstockings collective broke up in 1970, though other groups with that name continued to work on feminist issues. On March 3, 1989, another abortion speakout was held in New York City on the 20th anniversary of the first. Florynce Kennedy attended, saying "I crawled off my death bed to come down here" as she called for the struggle to continue.
7. Feminist Health Movement From its earliest days in the 1960s, the women's liberation movement focused on abortion and women's right to control their bodies. Some of the more radical groups engaged in underground abortion clinics, most notably in Chicago; others, like the Boston's Women's Health Collective began writing/publishing projects; and organizations like NOW formed Task Forces to work on the issue of reproductive rights. In fact, it was in NOW that leaders of the feminist health movement, Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothman, first became active and initially demonstrated gynecological self-examination. And while Downer and Rothman went on to open the first Feminist Women's Health Center at the Crenshaw Women's Center, other women, like Vi Verreaux worked at and opened more conventionally structured, service-oriented clinics for women. This series is comprised of interviews with these three women. The long interviews with Downer and Rothman document the evolution and expansion of their work, and although the much shorter interview with Verreaux barely touches on her clinic work, it does provides a glimpse into a service-oriented, community-based clinic.
8. The Racist History of Abortion and Midwifery Bans https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/the-racist-history-of-abortion-and-midwifery-bans. Today’s attacks on abortion access have a long history rooted in white supremacy. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in June Medical Services v. Russo this week, it is worth reflecting on the racist origins of the anti-abortion movement in the United States, which date back to the ideologies of slavery. Just like slavery, anti-abortion efforts are rooted in white supremacy, the exploitation of Black women, and placing women’s bodies in service to men. Just like slavery, maximizing wealth and consolidating power motivated the anti-abortion enterprise. Then, just as now, anti-abortion efforts have nothing to do with saving women’s lives or protecting the interests of children. Today, a person is 14 times more likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion, and medical evidence has shown for decades that an abortion is as safe as a penicillin shot—and yet abortion remains heavily restricted in states across the country. Prior to the Civil War, abortion and contraceptives were legal in the U.S., used by Indigenous women as well as those who sailed to these lands from Europe. For the most part, the persons who performed all manner of reproductive health care were women — female midwives. Midwifery was interracial; half of the women who provided reproductive health care were Black women. Other midwives were Indigenous and white. However, in the wake of slavery’s end, skilled Black midwives represented both real competition for white men who sought to enter the practice of child delivery, and a threat to how obstetricians viewed themselves. Male gynecologists claimed midwifery was a degrading means of obstetrical care. They viewed themselves as elite members of a trained profession with tools such as forceps and other technologies, and the modern convenience of hospitals, which excluded Black and Indigenous women from practice within their institutions. History would later reveal that it was literally on the backs of Black women’s bodies that such tools were developed. Dr. Marion Sims famously wrote about his insomniac-induced “epiphanies” that stirred him to experiment on enslaved Black women, lacerating, suturing, and cutting, providing no anesthesia or pain relief. Only recently have the terrors that Black women endured through nonconsensual experimentation by gynecologists of the 19th and 20th centuries been acknowledged. Successful racist and misogynistic smear campaigns, cleverly designed for political persuasion and to achieve legal reform, described Black midwives as unhygienic, barbarous, ineffective, non-scientific, dangerous, and unprofessional. Dr. Joseph DeLee, a preeminent 20th century obstetrician and fervent opponent to midwifery, stated in a much-quoted 1915 speech, “Progress Toward Ideal Obstetrics”: The midwife is a relic of barbarism. In civilized countries the midwife is wrong, has always been wrong … The midwife has been a drag on the progress of the science and art of obstetrics. Her existence stunts the one and degrades the other. For many centuries she perverted obstetrics from obtaining any standing at all among the science of medicine … Even after midwifery was practiced by some of the most brilliant men in the profession, such practice was held opprobrious and degraded. At the root of these stereotypes were explicit efforts to destroy midwifery and promote white supremacy. As the surge of lynchings, “separate but equal” laws, police violence, and the decimation of successful Black communities during Jim Crow revealed, Black Americans post slavery suffered greatly due to white supremacy, as did Chinese and Japanese workers and their families. Indeed, the racist campaigns launched by doctors against Black midwives extended to anti-immigration legislative platforms targeted at Chinese and Japanese workers. The Page Act, which restricted Chinese women from entering the United States, is a part of this shameful legacy. This broader 20th century anti-Chinese campaign became known as “yellow peril.” DeLee and Horatio Storer urged white women to “spread their loins” across the nation, a dog whistle about the threat of too many Blacks and Asians in the U.S. Gynecologists explicitly revealed their motivations in undermining midwifery: They desired financial gains, recognition, and a monopoly. As Dr. DeLee wrote in a 1916 article published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Disease of Women & Children, “There is high art in obstetrics and that it must pay as well for it as for surgery. I will not admit that this is a sordid impulse. It is only common justice to labor, self-sacrifice, and skill.” They believed that men should be paid, but not women — particularly not Black women. To better understand racial injustice in the anti-abortion movement, remember that American hospitals barred the admission of African Americans both in terms of practice and as patients. And, the American Medical Association (AMA) barred women and Black people from membership. The AMA, founded in 1847, refused to admit Black doctors, informing them, “You come from groups and schools that admit women and that admit irregular practitioners.” For this reason, Black doctors formed the National Medical Association in 1895. In 2008, the organization issued a public apology for its active campaigns to close Black medical schools, deny Blacks membership, and other efforts to marginalize Black patients and practitioners. Gynecologists pushed women out of the field of reproductive health by lobbying state legislatures to ban midwifery and prohibit abortions. Doing so not only undercut women’s reproductive health, but also drove qualified Black women out of medical services. For these groups, there was no meaningful path to the formalized skill set DeLee claimed necessary. Abortion was an expedient way to frame their campaign to create monopolies on women’s bodies for male doctors. The American Medical Association explicitly contributed to this cause through its exclusion of women and Black people. Today, as people debate whether anti-abortion platforms benefit Black women, the clear answer is no. The U.S. leads the developed world in maternal and infant mortality. The U.S. ranks around 50th in the world for maternal safety. Nationally, for Black women, the maternal death rate is nearly four times that of white women, and 10 to 17 times worse in some states. In the wake of both Whole Woman’s Health and June Medical Services v. Russo, keep in mind that both Texas and Louisiana, where these cases originated, are considered the deadliest in the developed world for a woman to give birth. Sadly, pregnancy has become a death sentence for many in the very places that make reproductive health care access the most fraught and hard to reach. Many of these states (though not all) are former slave states, such as Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. As Black people in these states continue to fight for equal access the reproductive care they need, Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech continues to resonate. And as the Supreme Court demonstrated this week, the fight for justice in reproductive health care and equality in abortion access is far from over. The decision does not advance the equality of poor Black women — it maintains all other burdensome restrictions already in place. We have much more work to do such that not only DeLee’s words, but also his racist and exploitative viewpoints, are relegated to history.
9. Panel Discussion of "No Más Bebés" Documentary No Más Bebés tells the story of a little-known but landmark event in reproductive justice, when a small group of Mexican immigrant women sued county doctors, the state, and the U.S. government after they were sterilized while giving birth at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Marginalized and fearful, many of these mothers spoke no English, and charged that they had been coerced into tubal ligation — having their tubes tied — by doctors during the late stages of labor. Often the procedure was performed after asking the mothers under duress.
11. 1962 Sherri Finkbine And The 50-Year Fight For Abortion In America Sherri Finkbine traveled to Sweden for an abortion after learning that Thalidomide, a tranquilizer drug she had taken, caused extensive deformities to the fetus. 1962: Abortion mother returns home An American mother-of-four is on her way home amid a storm of controversy after being given a legal abortion in Sweden. Sherri Finkbine, a TV presenter from Phoenix in Arizona, was denied an abortion in her home state following intense negative publicity surrounding her case. The 30-year-old mother decided to terminate her fifth pregnancy after discovering that tranquilizers she had taken in the first few weeks of her pregnancy contained the drug Thalidomide. In recent months there has been increasing evidence suggesting Thalidomide causes severe foetal deformities including missing limbs, deafness and blindness. Public condemnation Mrs Finkbine, host of children's television programme "Romper Room", told her story to the local newspaper, believing it would alert other mothers in the same situation to the dangers of the drug. But she became the focus of an intense anti-abortion campaign and worldwide public condemnation. The negative publicity led her local hospital in Phoenix to withdraw a tentative offer of a legal abortion for fear they may be held criminally liable - the current law in Arizona states that abortion can only be carried out to save the mother's life. Mrs Finkbine and her husband, Robert, a school teacher, took the case to the Arizona State Supreme Court but were unsuccessful. Despite vilification from anti-abortionists across the United States and the world she flew to Sweden where the operation was carried out. After the operation it was confirmed that the foetus had no legs and only one arm .
12. 1970 A member of the Third World Womens Alliance demonstrates https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/13/the-mississippi-abortion-case-and-the-fragile-legitimacy-of-the-supreme-court /The Mississippi Abortion Case and the Fragile Legitimacy of the Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is an open challenge to the Court’s authority, and perhaps broadly reflects a spirit of legal self-help that is running through the land. in this latest round of attacks on Roe, a novel line of argument has emerged: that forced pregnancy and parenthood no longer constitute a hardship for women. Lawyers representing Mississippi, the appellant in the lawsuit, describe a world that has fundamentally changed over the past fifty years, in which the burdens of parenting have been lifted and women have been empowered to have it all—to assume a career while still raising families. As for those women who would prefer not to parent, they now have the option to simply terminate their parental rights. In a legal brief, Mississippi described a fantasy land, where “many (largely post-dating Roe) laws protect equal opportunity—including prohibitions on sex and pregnancy discrimination in employment,” where the law guarantees parental leave, and where there is “support to offset the costs of childcare for working mothers.” The brief continued, “Sweeping policy advances now promote women’s full pursuit of both career and family.” In an interview with a local television station, the state attorney general, Lynn Fitch, added, as a flourish, “Fifty years ago, for professional women, they wanted you to make a choice. Now you don’t have to. Now you have the opportunity to be whatever you want to be. You have the option in life to really achieve your dreams, your goals, and you can have those beautiful children as well.” These would be wild claims under normal circumstances, but, in the midst of the pandemic, when child-care costs have been rising dramatically and when intermittent and impromptu school closures have forced nearly two million women out of the workforce, they are ludicrous.
13. 1960s Health fair at Castelar Elementary School The Movement suffered from misogyny and homophobia. Though perhaps less so than other Third World left groups (e.g. there were fewer instances of physical abuse and assault), women and queer-identified people fought for presence, voice, and their issues. At the same time, the analysis of a “triple oppression” of class, race, and gender for women, and the creation of a multiracial LGBT identity, opened a profound reworking of patriarchal and heterosexual norms. These movements within the Movement are crucial not only to appraising the Asian American Movement, but offer vital case studies for our intersectional present.
14. The Crenshaw Women’s Center The CRENSHAW WOMEN’S CENTER was the first women’s center in Los Angeles and was a ground-breaking facility serving women in a variety of capacities. It housed the nation’s first women’s clinic, Women’s Self-Help One, and was the site of The Great Yogurt Conspiracy. In three action-packed years, the Crenshaw Women’s Center generated an enormous amount of energy, pivotal change, and several firsts for the Women’s Rights Movement and second-wave feminism in Los Angeles and the nation. A Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM) application was prepared and submitted to the city of Los Angeles by Kate Eggert and Krisy Gosney.
15. “Más Bebés?”: An Investigation of the Sterilization of Mexican-American Women at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the 1960s and 70s

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1. La Operación - The Subversion and Portrayal of Female Agency in Latinx Reproductive Rights Widespread sterilization operation led by the United States during the 1950s and 60s in Puerto Rico. La Operación is a documentary from 1982 that shows the widespread sterilization operation led by the United States during the 1950s and 60s in Puerto Rico. Ana María García directed the film which highlights how the United States pushed for increased female sterilization in Puerto Rico. She mixes in the documentary a blend of interviews with women from different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds but the interviews are not the only focus of her work; she also incorporates scenes showing a sterilization procedure in addition to other historical and contextual parts. account from the documentary displays the same message as the propaganda above, that there are prosperity and good living associated with sterilization, based on the belief that too many kids lead to a perpetual state of destitution. These false beliefs led many women to give up their agency over their bodies and cave into getting sterilized—except they did not know all the time what they were signing up for.
2. The Racist History of Abortion and Midwifery Bans https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/the-racist-history-of-abortion-and-midwifery-bans. Today’s attacks on abortion access have a long history rooted in white supremacy. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in June Medical Services v. Russo this week, it is worth reflecting on the racist origins of the anti-abortion movement in the United States, which date back to the ideologies of slavery. Just like slavery, anti-abortion efforts are rooted in white supremacy, the exploitation of Black women, and placing women’s bodies in service to men. Just like slavery, maximizing wealth and consolidating power motivated the anti-abortion enterprise. Then, just as now, anti-abortion efforts have nothing to do with saving women’s lives or protecting the interests of children. Today, a person is 14 times more likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion, and medical evidence has shown for decades that an abortion is as safe as a penicillin shot—and yet abortion remains heavily restricted in states across the country. Prior to the Civil War, abortion and contraceptives were legal in the U.S., used by Indigenous women as well as those who sailed to these lands from Europe. For the most part, the persons who performed all manner of reproductive health care were women — female midwives. Midwifery was interracial; half of the women who provided reproductive health care were Black women. Other midwives were Indigenous and white. However, in the wake of slavery’s end, skilled Black midwives represented both real competition for white men who sought to enter the practice of child delivery, and a threat to how obstetricians viewed themselves. Male gynecologists claimed midwifery was a degrading means of obstetrical care. They viewed themselves as elite members of a trained profession with tools such as forceps and other technologies, and the modern convenience of hospitals, which excluded Black and Indigenous women from practice within their institutions. History would later reveal that it was literally on the backs of Black women’s bodies that such tools were developed. Dr. Marion Sims famously wrote about his insomniac-induced “epiphanies” that stirred him to experiment on enslaved Black women, lacerating, suturing, and cutting, providing no anesthesia or pain relief. Only recently have the terrors that Black women endured through nonconsensual experimentation by gynecologists of the 19th and 20th centuries been acknowledged. Successful racist and misogynistic smear campaigns, cleverly designed for political persuasion and to achieve legal reform, described Black midwives as unhygienic, barbarous, ineffective, non-scientific, dangerous, and unprofessional. Dr. Joseph DeLee, a preeminent 20th century obstetrician and fervent opponent to midwifery, stated in a much-quoted 1915 speech, “Progress Toward Ideal Obstetrics”: The midwife is a relic of barbarism. In civilized countries the midwife is wrong, has always been wrong … The midwife has been a drag on the progress of the science and art of obstetrics. Her existence stunts the one and degrades the other. For many centuries she perverted obstetrics from obtaining any standing at all among the science of medicine … Even after midwifery was practiced by some of the most brilliant men in the profession, such practice was held opprobrious and degraded. At the root of these stereotypes were explicit efforts to destroy midwifery and promote white supremacy. As the surge of lynchings, “separate but equal” laws, police violence, and the decimation of successful Black communities during Jim Crow revealed, Black Americans post slavery suffered greatly due to white supremacy, as did Chinese and Japanese workers and their families. Indeed, the racist campaigns launched by doctors against Black midwives extended to anti-immigration legislative platforms targeted at Chinese and Japanese workers. The Page Act, which restricted Chinese women from entering the United States, is a part of this shameful legacy. This broader 20th century anti-Chinese campaign became known as “yellow peril.” DeLee and Horatio Storer urged white women to “spread their loins” across the nation, a dog whistle about the threat of too many Blacks and Asians in the U.S. Gynecologists explicitly revealed their motivations in undermining midwifery: They desired financial gains, recognition, and a monopoly. As Dr. DeLee wrote in a 1916 article published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Disease of Women & Children, “There is high art in obstetrics and that it must pay as well for it as for surgery. I will not admit that this is a sordid impulse. It is only common justice to labor, self-sacrifice, and skill.” They believed that men should be paid, but not women — particularly not Black women. To better understand racial injustice in the anti-abortion movement, remember that American hospitals barred the admission of African Americans both in terms of practice and as patients. And, the American Medical Association (AMA) barred women and Black people from membership. The AMA, founded in 1847, refused to admit Black doctors, informing them, “You come from groups and schools that admit women and that admit irregular practitioners.” For this reason, Black doctors formed the National Medical Association in 1895. In 2008, the organization issued a public apology for its active campaigns to close Black medical schools, deny Blacks membership, and other efforts to marginalize Black patients and practitioners. Gynecologists pushed women out of the field of reproductive health by lobbying state legislatures to ban midwifery and prohibit abortions. Doing so not only undercut women’s reproductive health, but also drove qualified Black women out of medical services. For these groups, there was no meaningful path to the formalized skill set DeLee claimed necessary. Abortion was an expedient way to frame their campaign to create monopolies on women’s bodies for male doctors. The American Medical Association explicitly contributed to this cause through its exclusion of women and Black people. Today, as people debate whether anti-abortion platforms benefit Black women, the clear answer is no. The U.S. leads the developed world in maternal and infant mortality. The U.S. ranks around 50th in the world for maternal safety. Nationally, for Black women, the maternal death rate is nearly four times that of white women, and 10 to 17 times worse in some states. In the wake of both Whole Woman’s Health and June Medical Services v. Russo, keep in mind that both Texas and Louisiana, where these cases originated, are considered the deadliest in the developed world for a woman to give birth. Sadly, pregnancy has become a death sentence for many in the very places that make reproductive health care access the most fraught and hard to reach. Many of these states (though not all) are former slave states, such as Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. As Black people in these states continue to fight for equal access the reproductive care they need, Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech continues to resonate. And as the Supreme Court demonstrated this week, the fight for justice in reproductive health care and equality in abortion access is far from over. The decision does not advance the equality of poor Black women — it maintains all other burdensome restrictions already in place. We have much more work to do such that not only DeLee’s words, but also his racist and exploitative viewpoints, are relegated to history.
3. 1970 A member of the Third World Womens Alliance demonstrates https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/13/the-mississippi-abortion-case-and-the-fragile-legitimacy-of-the-supreme-court /The Mississippi Abortion Case and the Fragile Legitimacy of the Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is an open challenge to the Court’s authority, and perhaps broadly reflects a spirit of legal self-help that is running through the land. in this latest round of attacks on Roe, a novel line of argument has emerged: that forced pregnancy and parenthood no longer constitute a hardship for women. Lawyers representing Mississippi, the appellant in the lawsuit, describe a world that has fundamentally changed over the past fifty years, in which the burdens of parenting have been lifted and women have been empowered to have it all—to assume a career while still raising families. As for those women who would prefer not to parent, they now have the option to simply terminate their parental rights. In a legal brief, Mississippi described a fantasy land, where “many (largely post-dating Roe) laws protect equal opportunity—including prohibitions on sex and pregnancy discrimination in employment,” where the law guarantees parental leave, and where there is “support to offset the costs of childcare for working mothers.” The brief continued, “Sweeping policy advances now promote women’s full pursuit of both career and family.” In an interview with a local television station, the state attorney general, Lynn Fitch, added, as a flourish, “Fifty years ago, for professional women, they wanted you to make a choice. Now you don’t have to. Now you have the opportunity to be whatever you want to be. You have the option in life to really achieve your dreams, your goals, and you can have those beautiful children as well.” These would be wild claims under normal circumstances, but, in the midst of the pandemic, when child-care costs have been rising dramatically and when intermittent and impromptu school closures have forced nearly two million women out of the workforce, they are ludicrous.
4. 1964 Forced sterilization policies in the US targeted minorities and those with disabilities – and lasted into the 21st century In August 1964, the North Carolina Eugenics Board met to decide if a 20-year-old Black woman should be sterilized. Because her name was redacted from the records, we call her Bertha. She was a single mother with one child who lived at the segregated O'Berry Center for African American adults with intellectual disabilities in Goldsboro. According to the North Carolina Eugenics Board, Bertha had an IQ of 62 and exhibited “aggressive behavior and sexual promiscuity.” She had been orphaned as a child and had a limited education. Likely because of her “low IQ score,” the board determined she was not capable of rehabilitation. Instead the board recommended the “protection of sterilization” for Bertha, because she was “feebleminded” and deemed unable to “assume responsibility for herself” or her child. Without her input, Bertha’s guardian signed the sterilization form.
5. 1960s Puerto Rican Women Sterilized as a "solution to poverty"
6. On May 9, 1960, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves the world’s first commercially produced birth-control pill On May 9, 1960, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves the world’s first commercially produced birth-control pill—Enovid-10, made by the G.D. Searle Company of Chicago, Illinois. Development of “the pill,” as it became popularly known, was initially commissioned by birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger and funded by heiress Katherine McCormick. Sanger, who opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States in 1916, hoped to encourage the development of a more practical and effective alternative to contraceptives that were in use at the time.
7. 1973 Roe v Wade was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court
8. 1969 Redstockings Abortion Speakout n 1969, the members of the radical feminist group Redstockings were furious that legislative hearings about abortion featured male speakers discussing such a crucial women's issue. They, therefore, staged their hearing, the Redstockings abortion speak-out, in New York City on March 21, 1969. The Fight to Make Abortion Legal The abortion speak-out took place during the pre-Roe v. Wade era when abortion was illegal in the United States. Each state had its own laws about reproductive matters. It was rare if not unheard of to hear any woman speak publicly about her experience with illegal abortion. FEATURED VIDEO Roe v. Wade Supported By 70% Of Americans Before the radical feminists' fight, the movement to change U.S. abortion laws was more focused on reforming existing laws than repealing them. Legislative hearings on the issue featured medical experts and others who wanted to finesse the exceptions to abortion prohibitions. These "experts" talked about cases of rape and incest or a threat to the life or health of a mother. Feminists shifted the debate to a discussion of a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body. Disruption In February of 1969, Redstockings members disrupted a New York legislative hearing about abortion. The New York Joint Legislature Committee on the Problems of Public Health had called the hearing to consider reforms to the New York law, then 86 years old, on abortion. They roundly condemned the hearing because the "experts" were a dozen men and a Catholic nun. Of all women to speak, they thought a nun would be the least likely to have contended with the abortion issue, other than from her possible religious bias. The Redstockings members shouted and called for the legislators to hear from women who had had abortions, instead. Eventually, that hearing had to be moved to another room behind closed doors. Women Raising Their Voices The members of Redstockings had previously participated in consciousness-raising discussions. They had also drawn attention to women's issues with protests and demonstrations. Several hundred people attended their abortion speak-out in the West Village on March 21, 1969. Some women spoke about what they suffered during illegal “back-alley abortions.” Other women spoke about being unable to get an abortion and having to carry a baby to term, then have the child taken away when it was adopted. Legacy After the Demonstration More abortion speak-outs followed in other U.S. cities, as well as speak-outs on other issues in the subsequent decade. Four years after the 1969 abortion speak-out, the Roe v. Wade decision altered the landscape by repealing most abortion laws then in effect and striking down restrictions on abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy. Susan Brownmiller attended the original 1969 abortion speak-out. Brownmiller then wrote about the event in an article for the "Village Voice", "Everywoman's Abortions: 'The Oppressor Is Man.'" The original Redstockings collective broke up in 1970, though other groups with that name continued to work on feminist issues. On March 3, 1989, another abortion speakout was held in New York City on the 20th anniversary of the first. Florynce Kennedy attended, saying "I crawled off my death bed to come down here" as she called for the struggle to continue.
9. 2021 California plans to be abortion sanctuary if Roe vs. Wade is overturned SACRAMENTO — With more than two dozen states poised to ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court gives them the OK next year, California clinics and their allies in the state Legislature on Wednesday revealed a plan to make the state a “sanctuary” for those seeking reproductive care, including possibly paying for travel, lodging and procedures for people from other states. The California Future of Abortion Council, made up of more than 40 abortion providers and advocacy groups, released a list of 45 recommendations for the state to consider if the high court overturns Roe vs. Wade — the 48-year-old decision that forbids states from outlawing abortion. The recommendations are more than wild ideas. Some of the state’s most important policymakers helped write them, including Toni Atkins, the San Diego Democrat who leads the state Senate and attended multiple meetings. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom started the group himself, and in an interview last week with the Associated Press said some of the report’s details will be included in his budget proposal in January.
10. 1960 Birth Control Pill tested on Puerto Rican Women
11. 2022 An abortion rights activist outside the Supreme Court in D.C The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion that was guaranteed nearly 50 years ago by the decision in Roe v. Wade. The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization was released Friday morning. The justices, voting 6-3 along ideological lines, sided with the Mississippi abortion law that was in question. Reactions were mixed across the country, with anti-abortion-rights supporters celebrating what they view as a victory, and abortion-rights activists expressing their frustration over the decision. Here are some of the scenes from D.C., and across the country. Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
12. 1960s Reproductive Justice for Latinas: Coerced, Forced, and Involuntary Sterilization By 1934, there were 67 birth control clinics operating under federal funding through Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Puerto Rican Relief Administration; in 1936, the Maternal and Childcare Health Association, a private entity, opened 23 more. A law passed the following year—Law 116—made sterilization legal and free for Puerto Rican women. Family planning clinics offering free sterilization were installed in the new factories of the industrial wave; women were encouraged to work in needlework and textile industries there, and were shown favoritism for sterilization compliance. Health officials campaigned door-to-door for sterilization throughout rural communities, too. In a dire economic situation and with few affordable alternative contraceptive methods available, the operation—or la operacion, as it was referred to locally—became commonplace. By the 1960s, about one-third of the female population had been sterilized—and many of those women hadn’t been educated about the permanency of tubal ligation.
13. 1960s A doctor at Los Angeles Community Hospital during the 1970s contested the notion that they targeted the Mexican community for sterilizations. Maria Figueroa returns to the maternity ward at Los Angeles county hospital. Her story is part of the PBS documentary “No Más Bebés.”Kevin Castro/In this case, the lack of similar efforts to conduct sterilizations in other hospitals underlines the racist sentiments in these forced surgeries. Specifically, in the Los Angeles region, only east LA and LA Community Hospital performed these operations and received such pushback. In other words, the only community that suffered due to uninformed and nonconsensual sterilization was east LA, a predominantly Mexican community. Furthermore, the tactic of asking non-English speakers to sign a form in English in most cases applied to the Mexican community in Los Angeles. A common argument given by doctors is that nothing they did shows they specifically targeted the Mexican community. Nevertheless, the standard operating procedures implemented at the hospital included asking patients to sign forms while under labor, not translating forms into Spanish for Spanish speakers, and overall not ensuring the informed consent at the time of signage. Combined, the doctors’ lack of concern for their patients and systematic targeting of patients while under labor and with English forms is understood to be forced sterilization. Regardless of original intention, be it money due to extra surgeries or increased prestige due to more successful surgeries completed, these doctors ultimately forcibly sterilized hundreds of women from a minority group, terminating their chances for reproduction and raising a family; they were able to do so primarily due to the race of their victims.
15. Abortion rights demonstrator Elizabeth White leads a chant in response to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 24, 2022.
16. Feminist Health Movement From its earliest days in the 1960s, the women's liberation movement focused on abortion and women's right to control their bodies. Some of the more radical groups engaged in underground abortion clinics, most notably in Chicago; others, like the Boston's Women's Health Collective began writing/publishing projects; and organizations like NOW formed Task Forces to work on the issue of reproductive rights. In fact, it was in NOW that leaders of the feminist health movement, Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothman, first became active and initially demonstrated gynecological self-examination. And while Downer and Rothman went on to open the first Feminist Women's Health Center at the Crenshaw Women's Center, other women, like Vi Verreaux worked at and opened more conventionally structured, service-oriented clinics for women. This series is comprised of interviews with these three women. The long interviews with Downer and Rothman document the evolution and expansion of their work, and although the much shorter interview with Verreaux barely touches on her clinic work, it does provides a glimpse into a service-oriented, community-based clinic.
18. 1960s - 1970s Uninformed Consent to Sterilization - Latina Women in targeted in East LA