The African American Community and the Birth Control Movement

Chapter 4, “Better Dead than Pregnant:” The Colonization of Native Womens’ Reproductive Health, discusses women's bodies being utilized as an experimental ground for reproduction and medical testing. Smith argues that racism plays a key role in the common anxieties about a rise in the global population. Even though population control organizations may claim to want to reduce the size of every ethnic and racial group, in the end, they often work to reduce populations of color. This reality leads to Smith’s argument of reproductive rights, which she views as a thinly veiled effort to destroy and control Native American communities. An illustration of this direct violation of women's reproductive rights was when the "Indian Health

• Part 1- Discuss book’s main arguments, supporting evidence and conclusions; Measuring Manhood, by Melissa N. Stein focuses on the influence by scientists in institutionalizing race as being a biological entity, using gender and sex differences to bolster these claims within the early periods of the United States from 1830 to 1934. Within the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these physical differences as argued by scientists were used to create a hierarchy of beings in the United States. Through one’s physical body their social body was constructed as being directly dependent on their physical characteristics. Moreover, she is concerned with how these “facts” were internalized by the citizens and how this led to differences in treatment.

The Birth Control Movement of 1912 in the United States had a significant impact on Women’s Reproductive Rights. Women in the 1800s would frequently die or have complications during or after childbirth. Even if the woman would have died, they would still have a great amount of children. As the years progressed into the 1900s, the amount of children being born dropped. Because of this, birth control supplements were banned, forcing women to have a child that she was not prepared for or did not want to have in the first place.

In the US, black women are over three times more likely to die from maternally related complications than white women, and their babies are less likely to survive their first year (Oparah & Bonparte, 2015). Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy and Childbirth, edited by Julia Chineyere Oparah and Alicia D. Bonaparte tells the stories, experiences, oppression, and subjection of black women in the maternal health care system. Each chapter in the book explained a certain key point in the experience of black women and the health care system. In the following, I will discuss how the medical industrial complex or the introduction of medical treatments has not only stripped women of color, trans women, poor and immigrant women of their autonomy, but has sustained the hierarchy of patriarchy in the health system.

Over the centuries, women have tried a number of methods to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Some of the pregnancy control measures that existed before the invention of the pill included abstinence and withdrawal. Unfortunately, such methods often failed to prevent unintended pregnancies. As such, birth control advocates continued researching for effective birth control methods. Americans did not meet the idea of birth control methods with enthusiasm. In fact, those who advocated the use of birth control devices experienced challenges, including being jailed.

The early twentieth century was a turning point in American history-especially in regards to the acquisition of women's rights. While the era was considered to be prosperous and later thought to be a happy-go-lucky time, in actuality, it was a time of grave social conflict and human suffering (Parish, 110). Among those who endured much suffering were women. As Margaret Sanger found out, women, especially those who were poor, had no choice regarding pregnancy. The only way not to get pregnant was by not having sex- a choice that was almost always the husband's. This was even more true in the case of lower-class men for whom, 'sex was the poor man's only luxury' (Douglas, 31). As a nurse who assisted in delivering

Imagine living in a world where birth control did not exist or was considered illegal to all women. This is the reality that women from our history dealt with for many years. Until the year 1965 birth control was banned for women living in the state of Connecticut. Whether married or unmarried the simple right of contraception, or asking a pharmacist about preventing pregnancy was illegal. This law prohibiting the practice of contraception was changed with the help of birth control activist such as Estelle Griswold. Griswold appealed the law in the popularly known case of Griswold vs. Connecticut. Her claim for legalized birth control helped changed the future for women living in the state of Connecticut. The revised law gave married women the freedom and privacy to take charge of their bodies and prevent unwanted pregnancies with the practice of birth control.

In late nineteenth century on into the early twentieth century America was going through a change. A change may in society thought was for the best. Slavery was ending, and the upper class was worried about the estimated four million African Americans and immigrants introducing themselves in the economy with little or no education. These people were worried the overload in population would negatively affect the economy they have worked so hard to create. It was felt something had to be done to prevent the impregnation of “bad genes” into the American community. Eugenics seemed to offer that solution. Eugenics still implements their version of “population control” and/or “family-planning” in our society today and we don’t even know it. We play along and support without even knowing why we’re playing along or what we are supporting. To help open the eyes of the majority, we need to go back in time and show how the “Eugenics Movement” started. How the country we love so much, did not love us back and how the support of this movement is stronger today than when it started.

The second was the high frequency of unemployment among black men that lessened their allure and practicability in the marriage market. Moynihan, believed that fathers should usually be the providers in American families, and he had much to say in regards to "illegitimacy" (the word used at a time for pregnancies out of wedlock). The number of white births in the U.S. that was ill-conceived, he wrote, 2 percent in 1940 to 3 percent in 1963. The black percentage, in any case, had hopped amid these years from 16.8 percent to 23.6 percent, subsequently remaining about eight times higher than among whites. black separation rates, as well, had expanded: in 1940 these had been the same for blacks and whites, yet by 1964 the nonwhite (here as somewhere else he implied Negro) rate had moved toward becoming 40 percent higher than that among whites. The outcome, he composed, was that "Just about One-Fourth of Negro Families Are Headed by Females. By August 1965 the Johnson organization immediately abandoned the Moynihan Report. Moynihan’s report caused a huge controversy, even caused riots to break out in Los

Bridgewater (2009) argues that an understanding of reproductive justice and the implications of its regulations in the U.S requires more than just a deep understanding of the laws that govern reproductive rights but also a very good understanding of the story of slavery. Slavery experiences of reproductive oppression, especially towards the Women of Color in the U.S, have fueled the movement for reproductive rights. The lack of freedom to reproductive rights and decisions has subjected the Women of Color to racism and sexism, creating stereotyped minds that they cannot be in control of their reproductive bodies. Bridgewater’s methodology was to

Throughout history, people have consistently tried to prove that groups with inborn qualities can either vastly improve or degenerate different races over time. This rhetoric has been proven multiple times throughout the course of the last century in the United States and Nazi-reigned Germany. Supposedly, this rhetoric has been disproven throughout the United States; however, there are proven accounts that the United States government has recently supported this theory of sterilization of minorities by supporting the eugenics movement, which was not only in Nazi Germany, but also on United States soil. The topic of improving the genetic makeup of different races has not only just become a common theme for many modern day countries to use to make their societies more genetically fit. However, it has adopted the basis for current racism that is clearly apparent in today’s society. If improving genetic fitness was not a concern to past societies, then people in general would be a lot more open to interracial and cross-cultural relationships rather than completely disregarding the idea of dating someone that is visibly genetically different.

Abortion is a form of “African-American genocide” because of the sheer number of black babies being killed by the procedure, according to New York State Assemblyman Ron Castorina Jr., (R-Staten Island).

This article examines the relationships between the development of eugenic theories and the dynamic of medical professionalization among American practitioners in the fields of obstetrics and gynecology that took place during the 19th century under the effect of significant biological and medical innovations.

In the 1960’s America was in a period of extreme growth along with other developing countries. There were major concerns and even hysteria about the population surge. Policymakers, demographers, and the military all thought that the biggest threat to mankind was the rise in humans. They came up with many reasons, but it was agreed at the time that drastic measures would be needed to control the growth. The author of the book, “The Population Bomb”, Paul Ehrlich pointed out the parents of Indian and Chinese parents would continue having daughters until a boy was born. His argument was to offer them a guaranteed that they would have a son with genetic manipulation. This would help to take the first step to controlling the population growth.

Not only was contraception going to contribute to a new race but it was going to change women forever. Women were now free from the bindings and dangers of pregnancy. Women could now control how many children they had and could submit more attention to each child. It is much easier to manage two or three