Op-Ed: I Want a Reproductive New Deal

TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual Violence, Rape

47 years after Roe v. Wade abolished abortion bans in the United States, it is sobering to come to terms with the truth: we continue to live in a period of policing the womb. I have worked in the women's health advocacy field for five years now, where I have been confronted with countless narratives about vileness towards women, and seen first hand how the indignities of state law cast irreparable harm. Among the stories I have been told was that of Oklahoma police officer Daniel Holtzclaw, who had squandered his law enforcement role by running background checks to obtain information he would later use to coerce women into silence after he violated, sodomized and raped their bodies. All 12 of the women he violated were Black; one who testified at his trial remembers having to consider her survival as he attacked her, handcuffed to a hospital bed.

I don’t bring up this repellent account lightly, I bring it up because the women who survived Officer Holtzclaw were not policied because of their ability to become pregnant, or pregnancy at all, for that matter. They were policed because of their race, hardship and gender. Those are the biases that drive the policing of reproductive rights, not religion. Eugenic policies have ruled the reproductive health of BIPOC women since the government sponsored terrorism of the Jim Crow era, and it is within that history that any conversation of reproductive rights needs to begin.

In September, Speaker Pelosi called for an investigation into the rumors of forced sterilization in the ICE detention centers at the United States border with Mexico. A number of members of Congress claimed it was not feasible for the atrocities being described–forced hysterectomies–to happen in the United States, but the generations of Black women would disagree. The investigation Pelosi called is imperative, but so is a reproductive rights bill. The lawmakers and legal professionals in the United States desperately need to be held accountable to the women they represent.

A reproductive rights bill is urgently necessary in this moment, where the government is attacking sex education in schools and encouraging ineffective abstinence-only ciriculums. There are instances of high maternal mortality rates, especially for BIPOC mothers. The government continues to roll back access to contraceptives, and threatens access to safe abortions with an unpredented number of new laws.

So, what would something like a reproductive bill of rights look like? These are a few ideas, put forth by drawtheline.org, an organization known best for a series of star studded ads featuring Meryl Streep, Kevin Bacon and Amy Poehler.

1. The right for people to make their own decisions about reproductive health absent intrusion and coercion.

2. The right to accessible, affordable and safe reproductive health care. Aspects of this care include but are not limited to: contraceptive, abortions, fertility treatments, and accurate information,

3. The right to be free from discrimination on the basis of reproductive decsions.

drawtheline.org is collecting signatures and hopes to deliver them to the new president.