When I was 12, my grandma and I got into a political squabble, of which I remember distinctly two things she told me: one was that women who came forward with their stories of rape later in life simply had “kisser’s regret”, and the other was that “the BLM movement is worse than the KKK because they’re burning buildings.” It nagged at me, thinking of the way in which both women who had been suppressed and raped and Black people who had been burnt alive and tortured had both been denied a choice. It’s hard not to feel frustrated and dismissed when discussing race and the rights women have when their bodies have been violated— especially when much of the debate around abortion fails to acknowledge the origin of this conflict: slavery.
There’s been much contention over abortion, especially in the past five years; however the “pro-life” argument about the validity of what’s considered a living human was not the original point debated when abortion was first restricted and banned. Instead, the root of conflict over abortion is money and the slave trade.
In 1808, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was abolished. This meant that American plantation owners needed to find a new source of human labor to continue their revenue: slave women. Slave owners forcibly raped the women they kept, and by the time the Civil War started in 1861, it became such a common occurrence that 10 percent of the slave population was composed of mulattos (one Black and one white parent), according to the Maryland State Government Archives. For reference, about 14 percent of the American population now is composed of Black people, and 0.3 percent of the population is mixed (Black and white), per Pew Research Center.
Teen girls trapped in slavery also provided a massive opportunity for slave owners to maintain their profit after the slave trade ended. They were brought to slave auctions, where their pubescent stage and fertility were advertised as a major selling point. The average age for girls to begin puberty is about ten, yet Black girls in particular have been found to begin puberty at age eight. Some Black girls experience puberty for the first time between the ages of five and six, according to NBC News. If a buyer found that the girl they bought was infertile in some way, they could rescind their ‘purchase’ and be refunded. Slave owners grasped at any ounce of profit they could make using slaves.
In the case Missouri v. Celia, a slave woman raped by plantation owner Robert Newsom argued that Missouri law protected any woman from forcible rape in the 1850s. Her case is eerily parallel to Dred Scott’s (also occurring in Missouri): they were not legally people, and therefore were not protected under the law. In Celia’s case, she was executed for killing her rapist after the attack– but not before the court forced her to give birth to the child. Her case isn’t singular. An enslaved woman killed her young child to prevent it from being roped into slavery. The Missouri court convicted her of murder; however, Judge Higginbotham, who had overseen many similar cases, questioned the intent of the court when they convicted her, asking if they truly cared about the child’s life or if the reasoning lied in the potential profit of the child. His point is alluring, considering that slave women, who were more prone to being lynched, were publicly raped before they were hung.
So, is abortion banning really about the ‘protection’ of life, or is it about stealing the right of dignity and the bodily autonomy of Black women? If you take a glance at a map, you’ll find that all but two slave states have restrictive abortion laws. After the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade, Missouri’s automatic trigger laws went into effect, meaning that abortion access was restricted almost instantaneously, making no exceptions in the case of rape or incest. This only forces low-income women further into poverty and requires that if they are raped, they must travel and lose money from job wages to undergo a medical procedure— not to mention the immoral way in which the right to a woman’s choice over her body and safety were stripped away. Ironically, this trigger law was spearheaded by many white males, a tradition of control carried over from 200+ years ago.
Senior Liya Fikru’s friend experienced this situation firsthand, where she had to travel to Illinois to receive care after she became pregnant. Since she is in college and does not have a car, nor the best financial situation being a college student, Fikru says it was hard for her.
“It’s not fair,” said Fikru. “I wish there was something more close…I don’t think it’s right to make a decision for somebody else, especially when it’s about bodily autonomy.”
One of Spanish teacher Caitlin Crain’s close friends shares this heartbreak.
“She was pregnant and wanted to have the baby, and they were really excited, shared news on Facebook, and then got a genetic test back saying that the baby had a really big birth defect and had a genetic disorder that… either the baby wouldn’t make it to full term or it would be stillborn. So she and her partner…decided to terminate the pregnancy just to eliminate some of the heartache, and they traveled to Illinois to do that,” said Crain.
Revoking the choice to have control over another’s own body is abhorrent, and the mental hardship it creates on pregnant individuals is inexcusable. In Georgia, Adriana Smith, a Black woman, was pregnant and, after a medical emergency occurred, she was declared brain dead. Despite her family’s wishes for her to be removed from life support, Georgia law said she must have the baby. She was kept on life support until her baby was removed via C-section, where she was then pulled off. As Black Literature teacher Sarah LaRue puts it, pregnancy is hard enough without added obstacles.
“Pregnancy is, even without the cognitive ability, such a taxing, trying time. It’s so sad that… they were saving her for her child. I understand babies’ lives are important. But that baby is also going to have to grow up without a mother and… being in the news for who it is that this child was,” said LaRue, “Part of a healthy pregnancy is also being cognitively aware you are pregnant. Moms start loving on their babies the second they find out they’re pregnant, so I have a feeling that baby underwent so much stress anyway. That wasn’t a healthy growing environment for the child either.”
Many of the horrific atrocities against slave women have carried over now. Part of why abortion became regarded nastily is because of the herbal remedies used by enslaved women to avoid their children being shackled by slavery; consequently, it was viewed as demonic and immoral. The sub-human view of Black women before and after the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment led them to be victims of medical experimentation at the hands of the declared “father of modern gynecology,” James Marion Sims. Without anesthesia, Sims would pry their bones apart, loosen their skulls with a shoemaker’s tool, perform invasive uterine surgeries, and test unsafe vaccines. As a result of his cruelty, Black women are three times more likely to die during childbirth, have less access to pain-relieving medications, and generally report not feeling like they are taken seriously by their healthcare providers, per the O’Neill Institute at Georgetown Law.
In order to mend the deep wound slavery has punctured into the wellbeing of Black women then and now, representation is a crucial step towards achieving the equity that needs to be integrated into the medical field. Fikru sometimes feels that the lack of representation can lead to misunderstanding.
“There’s not that many Black doctors or Black female doctors that I’ve seen…there’s a lot of male or white doctors. So I think…they won’t relate to me or…they might not understand some things for me as a Black woman,” said Fikru.
I can relate to her sentiments; as someone planning to become a gynecological oncologist to bridge the racial gap in healthcare for Black women, I did some research. One week ago, I looked for Black female gynecologists within the St. Louis area. Out of over fifty results, I found zero.
“We can try creating spaces for women to be able to learn more about healthcare, because there’s a lot of places where they don’t get that…sometimes when you don’t see a lot of people like yourself, you’re kind of pushed away from it,” said Fikru.
It’s vital to keep these kinds of conversations open, which can sometimes be a challenge in a predominantly white school/town.
“Sometimes people just get uncomfortable if you talk about it, and they just walk away or try to change the subject, or they just stop talking because they don’t know how to add to it…I think if people just talk about it, they’ll feel more comfortable,” said Fikru.
