Clarence Thomas Race-Baits Abortion Rights Advocates

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abortion, birth control, Clarence Thomas, eugenics, Margaret Sanger, population control, race-baiting, racism, U.S. Supreme Court

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court voted to block part of an Indiana law banning abortion based on the sex, race, or health defects of the fetus. In his dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas maintained that the current reproductive rights movement has disquieting similarities to earlier population control groups that sought to limit the birth rates of those they deemed unfit. He cited Margaret Sanger’s eugenic proclivities and allies, and stated that currently abortion rates are highest among racial minorities and the disabled — precisely the groups that old-style eugenicists had hoped to reduce. He insinuated that the abortion rights movement is racist.

Many anti-abortionists like the idea of associating present-day reproductive rights activists with the racist agendas of earlier zero population growth advocates, and right-wing commentators such as Ross Douthat of The New York Times welcomed Thomas’ remarks as if they contained some sort of profound truth.  (Occasionally in the past this line of argument has been used as a cover for opposition to women’s health rights. For example, in the 1960s and 1970s some male Black nationalists such as Amiri Baraka and several Black Panther leaders battled with their female counterparts and other Black women’s health activists over this point, with the men denouncing birth control as a genocidal plot and the women insisting on their right to limit family size.)

But Thomas’ efforts to link modern-day abortion rights proponents with 20th-century eugenicists are hypocritical and historically unsound. For one thing, except for a brief time in her more radical youth, Margaret Sanger opposed the legalization of abortion. Neither she nor even the most viciously racist eugenicists whose support she solicited (for example, the Nazi sympathizer and Ku Klux Klan member Lothrop Stoddard) advocated abortion as a means of limiting “undesirable” populations. Rather, they pushed contraception and in some cases sterilization of those they considered “unfit.” Abortion rarely if ever figured into the discourse of eugenicists.

Lothrop Stoddard (1883–1950)
Eugenicist, white supremacist, Nazi supporter, and co-founder of the American Birth Control League

Moreover, mid-19th century movements to make abortion illegal in the U.S. and other countries emerged not so much from some pious life-begins-at-conception notion but rather from fears that the wrong women were practicing abortion. Doctors and other upper-middle-class white professionals pointed uneasily to the relatively large families of people of color, immigrants and the working class, and lamented the propensity of affluent, educated white women to limit family size through abortion. Even in more recent times, echoes of these racist fears can be found among some foes of legalized abortion. In 2007, Portuguese Cardinal José da Cruz Policarpo couched his opposition to legalizing the practice in racist terms, saying that European (i.e., white) culture and values would be put at risk by low birth rates relative to those of (non-white) immigrants to his country.

Besides distorting history, Thomas’ argument blatantly ignores two basic facts. First, if women of color are disproportionately represented among women who seek abortions, it is because they are disproportionately represented among the poor. (According to research by the Guttmacher Institute, 75% of abortion patients in the U.S. are poor or low-income.) Yet self-styled “pro-life” crusaders are conspicuous by their absence when it comes to advocating comprehensive sex education, free prenatal care, onsite infant day care at Walmart’s and other low-wage employers, and similar measures that might actually help underprivileged women and their offspring. Until Clarence Thomas, Ross Douthat, and other opponents of legal abortion demonstrate concrete support for babies of the disadvantaged who have already been born, their professed concern for minority populations is disingenuous and hypocritical.

Second, anyone who has any knowledge of the historical or present-day statistics on abortion worldwide knows full well that prohibiting abortion does virtually nothing to prevent the practice. The procedure becomes more costly and more difficult to obtain, and desperate women without the means to flee to a more reproductive-health-conscious state or country are likely to attempt self-induction or fall into the hands of unscrupulous clandestine providers. Meanwhile, affluent women can virtually always obtain safe illegal abortions.

Safe, legal, accessible abortion is a vital necessity for women’s reproductive health and wellbeing, and this is especially true for low-income and minority women, who are the main victims of policies that restrict access. Right-wing jurists such as Clarence Thomas are no friend of minority women.

Melinda Gates Makes the Same Mistake as Margaret Sanger

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abortion stigma, family planning, Gates Foundation, Margaret Sanger, Melinda Gates

Melinda Gates

Recently I came across a 6/2/14 blog post from Melinda Gates extolling her foundation’s emphasis on reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health (they use the acronym RMNCH). Gates was bothered by the fact that many commentators see RMNCH issues as inextricably linked with abortion access/legality. She insisted that abortion should be discussed separately from other reproductive health issues, and she proudly announced that the Gates Foundation has no intention of funding abortion. Gates’ blog post drew protest from some feminists, including Daily Beast writer Sally Kohn, who posted “A Plea to Melinda Gates: Stop Stigmatizing Abortion.” Kohn pointed out that the Gates Foundation’s head-in-the-sand policy on abortion comes at a time when, according to World Health Organization figures, each year approximately 20 million women resort to unsafe abortion and at the barest minimum 68,000 women worldwide die from the consequences.

Provision of effective contraception could certainly reduce these numbers, but it is absurd to act as if contraception will eliminate the need for abortion altogether. Contraceptives fail. Women’s circumstances change. A partner can leave or become abusive. A loved one might suddenly require intensive care. Any of a score of events could mean that a pregnancy, even one that was desired at one time, cannot be allowed to continue without hardship. And the fact is that once a woman has decided that continuing a pregnancy is not in the best interests of herself and her family, she is likely to terminate it by whatever means necessary, even possibly attempting the procedure on herself.

Gates is regrettably (if unconsciously) following in the footsteps of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. Sanger is often eulogized as the mother of modern birth control. However, as I discuss in Sex and Herbs and Birth Control (pages 182-188), in the first decades of the 20th century Sanger promoted “modern” contraceptives (which at the time consisted of ill-fitting diaphragms or spermicidal jellies) as the logical replacement for abortion. But these methods were unreliable, as Sanger knew. Moreover, a study in Sanger’s own clinic indicated that most women who discovered their condition when they came in requesting birth control did not carry their pregnancy to term but rather found some medical excuse for termination (doctors would often approve medical termination of pregnancy for the affluent) or else disappeared into the abortion underground. But Sanger refused to recognize the implications of these findings. Unlike more progressive feminists of the time, such as Drs. Marie Equi and Madeleine Pelletier (both of whom gave abortions to poor women themselves) and Mary Ware Dennett, Sanger stubbornly insisted that contraception could eliminate the need for legal abortion entirely. This was wrong then, and it’s wrong now. Melinda Gates is making the same mistake.

Gates appears to be avoiding the abortion issue for a couple of reasons. She herself is a Catholic and does not want to challenge the Church’s stance as many Catholics (for example, the group Catholics for Choice) have done. In addition, like Margaret Sanger, Melinda Gates seems to feel that by stigmatizing abortion her Foundation can avoid controversy and position itself in the mainstream. This approach worked for Sanger, in that she was able to attract some fairly conservative donors who would have balked at being associated with a “leftist” demand such as legalized abortion. (The infant Soviet Union immediately legalized abortion in 1918, so calls for legalization in the West were often branded as “communist.”)

But Gates is deluding herself. Abortion access is integral to any RMNCH strategy worthy of the name. And promoting abortion stigma, as Gates does, is not helpful to anyone who is truly interested in women’s reproductive health and wellbeing.