Owning Your Own Body: The women’s movement for reproductive agency
In Jennifer Nelson’s More Than Medicine, sociologist and historian Zakiya Luna explains that reproductive rights and reproductive justice are not synonymous (Nelson, 194). Additionally, reproductive rights are not exclusively bound to abortion, although 1970s and 80s white-based women’s movements made this their main platform. Reproductive rights emphasize a woman’s entitlement to choose what to do with her body, which includes pregnancy, abortion, and contraceptive use. Reproductive justice examines accessibility to these reproductive rights among different demographics of women.
Nelson elucidates that abortions were performed before their legalization with the 1973’s court case Roe vs. Wade. Women, in desperate situations, would do anything, from the limited options available, to not have a child. These recourses ranged from certified physicians performing illegal abortions to women executing self-abortions. Overall, abortion illegality led many women to “…suicide…and ‘back alley butchers…’” (Nelson, 77). Therefore, after legalization, anti-abortion measures and groups— such as the 1976 Hyde Amendment that cut federal Medicaid funding for abortions and the violent protest group Operation …show more content…
Nelson expands on this by highlighting women who wanted to carry their pregnancies to term, but were pressured by “’economic survival’” to terminate them (nelson, 171). Nelson questions, “How often did young women feel coerced to either bear a child or abort?”(Nelson, 86). Others, particularly women of color, were subject to involuntary sterilization, as in the cases of the underage African American Relf sisters and the “’mass sterilization of Puerto Rican women in the 1950s” (Nelson, 203). These forced sterilizations were deemed as genocidal population control of minorities and an infringement upon a woman’s right to have a
In Jennifer Nelson’s More Than Medicine, sociologist and historian Zakiya Luna explains that reproductive rights and reproductive justice are not synonymous (Nelson, 194). Additionally, reproductive rights are not exclusively bound to abortion, although 1970s and 80s white-based women’s movements made this their main platform. Reproductive rights emphasize a woman’s entitlement to choose what to do with her body, which includes pregnancy, abortion, and contraceptive use. Reproductive justice examines accessibility to these reproductive rights among different demographics of women.
Nelson elucidates that abortions were performed before their legalization with the 1973’s court case Roe vs. Wade. Women, in desperate situations, would do anything, from the limited options available, to not have a child. These recourses ranged from certified physicians performing illegal abortions to women executing self-abortions. Overall, abortion illegality led many women to “…suicide…and ‘back alley butchers…’” (Nelson, 77). Therefore, after legalization, anti-abortion measures and groups— such as the 1976 Hyde Amendment that cut federal Medicaid funding for abortions and the violent protest group Operation …show more content…
Nelson expands on this by highlighting women who wanted to carry their pregnancies to term, but were pressured by “’economic survival’” to terminate them (nelson, 171). Nelson questions, “How often did young women feel coerced to either bear a child or abort?”(Nelson, 86). Others, particularly women of color, were subject to involuntary sterilization, as in the cases of the underage African American Relf sisters and the “’mass sterilization of Puerto Rican women in the 1950s” (Nelson, 203). These forced sterilizations were deemed as genocidal population control of minorities and an infringement upon a woman’s right to have a