Category: Racism

From the book Swimming Against the Tide, a book of feminist essays against abortion. Bobbi Sykes a black Australian woman, was at a televison interview with a pro-choice feminist who was white. She describes their conversation:

“A male interviewer organized a prominent white movement woman to debate the subject with me on television.  Unfortunately, the woman used the opportunity to scream at me that I wasn’t the right sort of black, and that I didn’t have a dozen children and live in the creek bed at Alice Springs… That I, representing an opinion of the black community, brazenly dared to confront and oppose an option of the white community, was sufficient to crack the veneer over the movement woman’s racism, and through that crack spewed forth the most virulent and racist comments that I had heard publicly for some time… privately, many similar events occur constantly.”

Ramazanoglu, C .  “Feminism and the Contradictions of Oppression” (Routledge , London, 1989) 191, quoting Sykes cap B. in Rowland, R. “Women Who Do and Women Who Don’t Join the Women’s Movement” (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1984) 64

“Swimming Against the Tide: Feminist Dissent on the Issue of Abortion” edited by Angela Kennedy (Dublin Ireland: Four Courts Press, 1997)

A young woman describes the indoctrination she received as a student in college:

“It shocked me to hear the racist things he [the professor] said: that the only reason white people opposed abortion, for example, was that we preferred letting black children grow up to rape white women so we could execute them. This painted neither whites nor blacks in a flattering light, and I was appalled to watch my darker-skinned classmates unquestioningly jotting down notes to the effect that their children were destined to be felons. I also had known my share of white folks opposed to abortion. None of us had such a low opinon of our fellows — we all figured that regardless of his or her skin color, every baby had as much chance of being a productive citizen as any other baby. But here was Dr. Z lying about people I knew — whites who opposed abortion — and about my black classmates who I thought would make fine parents of perfectly law-abiding children.”

Dr. Bernard Nathanson was instrumental in making abortion legal in New York in the 1970s. He was the cofounder of NARAL, then the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, now NARAL Pro-Choice America. He described how the pro-choice activists, who were mostly white and upper class, wanted to appeal to the masses by having “token” minorities in the public eye:

Nathanson quotes Laurence Lader, his cofounder of NARAL:

“We’ve got to keep the women out in front…. And some blacks. Black women especially. Why are they so damn slow to see the importance of this whole movement to themselves?”

Bernard N Nathanson, M.D. with Richard N Ostling. Aborting America (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1979) 53

According to one pro-choice author:

“Among medical professionals and social workers, teenagers are perhaps most likely to encounter people with more liberal views about abortion, and to find themselves on the defensive if they are determined to continue their pregnancies… pregnant women whose cultures or circumstances do not fit… are disapproved of as candidates for motherhood. Tacit disapproval sometimes becomes vocal — urging the woman towards abortion and, if she insists on keeping the pregnancy, castigating her for her “irrational” selfishness…Black teenagers, in particular, are singled out by the medical and social work profession as “problem parents”… outright coercion or bullying is hard to prove, but, undoubtedly, young mothers, poor mothers, and above all poor young black mothers are being hustled towards abortion with no respect for their “right to choose.”

Janet Hadley “Abortion: between Freedom and Necessity” (Great Britain: Virago Press) 1996 p 104, 106

According to Texas Business Today’s (Summer 1999) coverage of US Court of Appeals for 5th Circuit; Case # 97-11310, Fadeyi v. Planned Parenthood, Lamarilyn Fadeyi is an African Amerian female who was employed by Planned Parenthood for seven years.

She alleged that Planned Parenthood engaged in various acts of racial discrimination against her during the course of her employment, ranging from discriminatory scheduling and distribution of office resources, to the executive director’s giving her and another black employee an application for membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Fadeyi filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Texas Commission on Human Rights, but both dismissed her complaints for lack of jurisdiction because Planned Parenthood had fewer than 15 employees at all relevant times.

Planned Parenthood fired Fadeyi two working days after receiving notification that the EEOC did not have jurisdiction to entertain her complaints. Fadeyi then brought suit in district court alleging racial discrimination in her employment and termination.

Credit: Life Dymanics

The African American mother of a woman who died at an Inglewood abortion clinic wrote a heartfelt plea for justice in a letter to former District Attorney for Los Angeles Ira Reiner:

“I am the mother of Belinda A. Byrd, victim of abortionists at 426 East 99th Street in Inglewood. I am also the grandmother of her three young children who are left behind and motherless. I cry every day when I think how horrible her death was. She was slashed by them and then she bled to death, taken from this world on January 27,1987. She has been stone dead for two years now, and nobody cares. I know that other young black women are now dead after abortion at that address — Cora Mae Lewis and Yvonne Tanner. Where is [the abortionist] now? Has he been stopped? Has anything happened to him because of what he did to my Belinda? Has he served jail time for any of these cruel deaths? People tell me nothing has happened, that nothing ever happens to white abortionists who leave young black women dead. I’m hurting real bad and want some justice for Belinda and all other women who go like sheep to slaughter.”

In his book “Abortion: A Doctor’s Perspective, a Woman’s Dilemma” abortion provider Don Sloan tells a story about when he was lobbying the New York State legislature on lifting abortion restrictions:

“We had needed only a single precious vote to go our way, and one conservative upstate lawmaker had switched his vote at the last minute.” A colleague said the vote had gone their way because the legislator was counting on abortion to limit the number of poor babies and keep the welfare rolls down. “‘It was part people who want to put abortion into the medical code where it belongs and part racism.’ . . . I hated to think that abortion reform had come out of such a philosophy, but I knew plenty of people saw abortion as a way to control the poor. . . Ending poverty would never be so simple as getting rid of poor babies. But if indeed that had been the reason behind the vote, it wouldn’t have been new in history.

Don Sloan, M.D. with Paula Hartz, Abortion: A Doctor’s Perspective, A Woman’s Dilemma. (New York: Donald I Fine, Inc., 1992 p 41.

“Latino women are some of the best patients [for abortions.] They come in and they don’t complain. Sometimes they are given abortions when they’re not even pregnant.”

Alfred Brown, M.D. of Los Angeles quoted in April 1998 Los Angeles Times report on abortion “chop shops” that exloit minority women. Quoted in Paul Likoudis “California Political Races Reflect “Catholic Diversity” The Wanderer October 15, 1998

“The 54% of Black children born to unwed mothers are not productive members of society. Teenagers never make good mothers….single mothers have bad children.”

Nancy White, speaking on behalf of NARAL, quoted in The American Feminist Summer 1994 p 14