Stamps_Marla_Undivided Justice_Blog 3

For this week’s reading by Jael Silliman, Undivided Rights, Silliman dedicated a book to women of color who are fighting for reproductive justice. The chapter that chose to focus on was chapter three, the African American Women Seed a Movement. One of Silliman’s arguments in this chapter was that the efforts to control black women’s fertility is rooted in racism.

Silliman provides some context about black women’s fertility during slavery. Slaves were a commodity. Because of the cotton industry, many plantation owners were in need of more slaves. So, black women were often needed to reproduce. Slave owners would force slaves to have sex so that they can produce more slaves. Since slaves were a commodity, it cut down the spending for a slave owner. The owner would not have to constantly purchase slaves because they have slaves reproducing more for them.

Later in history, the efforts to control black women’s fertility was happening through birth control. Birth control was heavily pushed onto black communities so that black women would have children. During that time, there was a push to make society whiter. White people believed that the reproduction of black people and people with disabilities tainted the pureness of human kind. However, white men were encouraged to not use birth control. White women were responsible for producing soldiers for the country.

Recently, we were talking about examples of leaflets for the class campaigns. One of the example was from the INCITE website and it was about the birth control shot called Depo. At the time, I was using Depo as my method of birth control. I only had one injection and was planning to switch methods after my 3 months were done. But, the leaflet provided history about Depo. It was used on disenfranchised communities, without the women knowing what it contained. Its purpose was to sterilize them so that they could reproduce. After I read that, I freaked out. The method of birth control is still offered to women. Why? The doctor informed me that I would stop having a menstrual cycle and that was all. Later, I learned that many women after stopping Depo have not had the menstrual cycle return. So, are they sterilized?

Thinking about contraceptives for women, should women be concerned about using birth control. How do we educate women more about birth control?

http://www.incite-national.org/sites/default/files/incite_files/resource_docs/2490_depo-flyer.pdf