Women of Color and the Anti-Choice Focus on Eugenics

The angle – that reproductive health care providers are organized to increase abortions by people of color in a plot to commit genocide for profit – has been in play by anti-choicers for years.  That theory has been, is now, and will always be insultingly paternalistic in its assumptions about women of color seeking reproductive health care.


I’ve heard of the black genocide conspiracy for years.  I am an activist in my home city of St. Louis Missouri and many of the young women of color I work with are aware of the rumors and ask questions about them.  

In my volunteer work I have met young women who thought drinking a certain soft drink would either prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections; others who have heard that contraceptives give users HIV; and some who were convinced that the withdrawal method protected them from sexually transmitted infections.  In the absence of knowledge, dangerously inaccurate information reigns supreme without challenge or correction.  
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The truth is:

• Black women are more likely to be diagnosed with cervical cancer at a later stage and are more likely to die of cervical cancer.

• Black people make up 13 percent of the population in the United States yet account for more than 49 percent of AIDS cases. AIDS is the leading cause of death for Black women between the ages 25 to 34, and the second leading cause of death for Black men between the ages 35 to 44.

• Black and Hispanic women have the highest teen pregnancy rates.

• Forty percent of Black Americans report being uninsured at some point from 2007 through 2008.

• Black women continue to die from breast cancer at alarming rates and a recent study found that half of Black teenage women reported having had one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases.

 

Clearly there are a lot of health-care related reasons why reproductive health care providers seek to provide services to communities of color.

Women of color are not children unable to make health care decisions, our children are not a species on the brink of extinction through an organized genocidal plot and justice is found when a people are unbound and empowered by medically accurate knowledge rather than dogma.  This Black History Month, despite well-produced marketing campaigns designed to spark fear and perpetuate myths, we must recommit ourselves to the struggle for reproductive justice in our communities.  Now, more than ever, we need to address the realities on the ground and reject the conspiracy theories being shouted by the anti-choice mob. 

Pamela Merritt