I am overwhelmed, but I want to say something about this moment, when Roe v. Wade is gone, when it feels like we are sliding, fast, down an icy slope, like we are on fire and screaming and they are just watching us burn; I want to say something about how this moment is not only a gender moment but a racial one. (No, I am not changing the subject. I am deepening it.)
This moment is racial because Black women of all socioeconomic statuses die in or after pregnancy and childbirth at between three and five times the rate of their white counterparts. Forced pregnancy will mean forcing Black women to their deaths in racialized, horrific numbers. (I did not die, but I know something of this problem.)
It’s racial because, though abortion was not generally regulated at the founding, reproductive rights certainly were — at least, they were if you were Black. By now we all know, even we if we do not all accept, that, alongside settler colonialism, chattel slavery is the cornerstone of this country’s economic power. (There are a thousand ways to prove and describe this reality — here is just one: by the year’s before the Civil War, enslaved people were more valuable than all the capital invested in manufacturing, railroads, and banks combined.) And the engine of our economic power was Black women giving birth — being forced to give birth — to more Black children who could…
