The Big ‘Pro-Life’ Agenda Has Always Promoted and Relied on Anti-Black Racism

By Kieran Mailman and Evonnia Woods

As we come to grip with living in a post-Roe nation, the anti-abortion movement is continuing to obscure their repressive ideology behind false pretenses and claims. The anti-abortion movement is increasingly working to frame their tactics, policies, and goals — as backed by science, which they are not; loving toward women and babies, toward whom they are actually quite callous; and opposed to racism, when in fact racism is part and parcel of the anti-abortion agenda. [1] To drive home their alleged opposition to racism, abortion opponents attempt to frame abortions as inherently eugenic while comparing those who provide and support abortions to slave owners; simultaneously downplaying the atrociousness of enslavement and dismissing the bodily autonomy of Black people who have abortions.

Abortion opponents have a history of racism that is both well-documented and prolific. The president of anti-abortion group Operation Save America was present at the white supremacist insurrection at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. [2] Anti-abortion leader Abby Johnson has made multiple disturbing, racist statements, including claiming the police would be within their rights to racially profile her adopted biracial son — she later doubled down on that vehemently racist point. [3] Anti-abortion racism is not only alive and well, but increasingly blatant.

More recently, Berkeley County West Virginians for Life targeted the state’s only Black woman in the legislature with Klan imagery after she co-sponsored a piece of pro-abortion legislation. [4] In Wisconsin, an anti-abortion activist wore a Ku Klux Klan robe while engaging in clinic harassment. [5] Additionally, Vitae Foundation — the primary advertising and marketing agency for anti-abortion fake clinics — made a deeply disturbing graphic that repeated harmful and racist stereotypes about Black people and enslavement. [6] Vitae Foundation had the audacity to label the graphic with “Juneteenth 2022,” marking the federal holiday in the U.S. commemorating the emancipation of enslaved Black people. It was then shared by Cincinnati Right to Life.

Anti-abortion leaders have a history of using language and promoting policies that disproportionately harms Black people. The hyper-conservative national organization Family Research Council recently published an article claiming to address the high maternal mortality rates in the U.S., but failed to mention that Black people are, on average, nearly three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than their white counterparts. [7] This article also failed to name the key reason for this racial health disparity: medical racism. [8] In fact, Black people are never mentioned. Whether this omission stems from Big ‘Pro-Life’s’ inconsideration or active disdain for Black birthing people, their omission is harmful to maternal health, especially when it materializes into pregnancy and abortion criminalization.

Not only are policies and laws that criminalize pregnancy and abortion guided by white supremacist ideology, but they are all grounded in the belief that abortions are easily and universally discernable, which they are not. As a result, health care providers upholding their oath to care for their patients face undue penalties for providing lifesaving reproductive medical treatment like that for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies. While these outcomes have an outsized impact on women of color, Black people with a capacity for pregnancy bear the brunt of it, as they have borne the brunt of most reproductive oppression in this country since chattel slavery. [9] As Kimberlé Crenshaw recently noted, “[t]he consequence of our society’s failure to see coerced pregnancy as a legacy of enslavement has descended once again upon Black women and all pregnant people.” [10]

White supremacy, the abysmal Black maternal mortality rates in the United States, and the anti-abortion movement are deeply and unmistakably connected. The anti-abortion movement cannot exist without white supremacy — its goals and institutions mirror those established by this violent, regressive ideology.

There is a long history of race-based reproductive oppression in the U.S. that corresponds with the white supremacist agenda of increasing the white population, and therefore keeping white people in power. Anti-abortion leaders’ current tactics, like their attempts to thwart reality by redefining the bodily autonomy of Black people with a capacity for pregnancy as eugenics, should be engaged within this context. An ahistorical and non-intersectional approach to the anti-abortion movement’s agenda keeps Black people with a capacity for pregnancy (and everyone, really) at the mercy of white patriarchal supremacy. We must continue to call out Big ‘Pro-Life’ for their racism and stop giving them huge platforms from which to spew their anti-Black talking points. Black people’s lives are literally on the line, so instead we should be following the leadership of Black people with a capacity for pregnancy and ensuring they have huge platforms to speak for themselves.

Kieran Mailman is Chief Research Analyst for Reproaction, and Evonnia Woods is Movement Building and Research Manager for Reproaction.

Sources:

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/25/roe-antiabortion-lawmakers-restrictions-state-legislatures/
[2] https://feminist.org/anti-abortion-violence/operation-save-america.html
[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/rnc-speaker-condones-police-racially-profiling-her-biracial-son-2020-8
[4] https://wchstv.com/news/local/black-lawmaker-sues-anti-abortion-group-over-racist-threat
[5] https://www.facebook.com/affiliatedmedicalservices/photos/a.1062233653787523/3978038025540390/
[6] https://twitter.com/reproaction/status/1546587131962957827
[7] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-mortality/2020/maternal-mortality-rates-2020.htm
[8] https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/news/2021/systemic-racism-key-risk-factor-maternal-death-and-illness
[9] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6727302/
[10] https://www.aapf.org/post/our-statement-on-bodily-autonomy