Required Materials -Roberts, Dorothy: Punishing Drug Addicts Who Have Babies -Vicenti Carpio, Myla: The Lost Generation -Film La Operación The main learning goal and focus of this unit is to reflect critically on reproductive rights and the social value of motherhood, in the specific case of nonwhite mothers and using three historical cases: the forced sterilization of Indigenous and Puerto Rican women, and the punitive regulation of Black motherhood. In the sociological literature, the term “reproductive rights” usually refers to the legal and human rights to reproductive health and the right to make autonomous decisions regarding one’s own body and reproductive powers. Some of the most important reproductive rights include: having affordable access to birth control and safe methods to interrupt a pregnancy, freedom from forced sterilization, the right to reproductive healthcare, the right to receive education on issues related to sex, sexuality, and gender, and the pregnant workers’ right to be protected from discrimination in the workplace. For example, campaigns for abortion rights support access to free, safe, and legal abortion, to end the practice of criminalizing and punishing women and transgender men who decide to interrupt a pregnancy. To support abortion rights does not mean to support abortion. Advocates believe that women should be free to make decisions involving their own bodies, and emphasize that criminalization does not prevent abortions from happening, but pushes poor women into clandestine clinics and unsafe procedures, which promotes maternal mortality. In her work, Dorothy Roberts links the force of racist stereotypes concerning Black women to the punitive regulation of black reproduction by means of demographic policies, foster care, and prisons. As seen in the previous unit, coercive control of reproduction has deep roots into US racial and economic history. Female fertility was key to the slave property system, especially after the abolition of the international slave trade, when “the slaveholding class was forced to rely on natural reproduction as the surest method of replenishing and increasing the domestic slave population. Thus, a premium was placed on the slave woman’s reproductive capacity” (Davis 1983:6). However, her children were appropriated to be sold like cattle and she was not considered as their mother: slave women were “instruments guaranteeing the growth of the labor force. They were breeders – animals whose Module IV | Reproductive Control 2 monetary value could be precisely calculated in terms of their ability to multiply their numbers” (Davis 1983:7). Roberts argues that the contempt for Black motherhood operated by dehumanizing stereotypes “that portray Black women as unfit to be mothers” legitimizes the attack against their body autonomy (Roberts 1997:8), in order to intervene in and take control of the reproduction of the Black population, and to justify and preserve white supremacy. In the 50s and 70s, thousands of Black (Roberts 1995), Indigenous (Vicenti Carpio 2004), and Puerto Rican (La Operación 1982) women were forced into sterilization programs, a public policy of population control: “the denial of Black reproductive autonomy serves the interest of white supremacy” (Roberts 1997:5). Of the utmost importance, “poor Black mothers are blamed for perpetuating social problems by transmitting defective genes, irreparable crack damage, and a deviant lifestyle” (Roberts 1997:3). This legitimizes and normalizes the criminalization of Black mothers with limited resources, looks away from the structural cause of racial injustice, and justifies racial oppression. In the words of Roberts, White childbearing is generally thought to be a beneficial activity: it brings personal joy and allows the nation to flourish. Black reproduction is treated as a form of degeneracy. Black mothers are seen to corrupt the reproduction process at every stage. Black mothers, it is believed, transmit inferior physical traits to the product of conception through their genes. They damage their babies in the womb through their bad habits during pregnancy. Then they impart a deviant lifestyle to their children through their example. This damaging behavior on the part of Black mothers – not arrangements of power – explains the persistence of Black poverty and marginality. Thus, it warrants strict measures to control Black women’s childbearing rather than wasting resources on useless social programs. (Roberts 1997:9 emphasis in original) As seen in the quote, racist assumptions about Black motherhood, specially, poor and working-class Black women, justify the denial of access to public resources (education, health, and so forth), which are essential to protect them and their children from the consequences of social injustice and institutional racism. In the light of recent history, statistics clearly show that, in the specific case of women, the punitive regulation of the reproduction of racialized and marginalized social groups has been a primary function of the prison system. Between 1970 and 2001, the total number of incarcerated women escalated from 5,600 to 161,200 women, which represents a staggering 2800% increase (Sudbury 2005). Although women represent 9% of incarcerated people nationally, they have become the fastest growing segment of the incarcerated population. 60% are women of color Module IV | Reproductive Control 3 (Black, Hispanic, Indigenous) and 80% are mothers who are likely to lose their children’s custody. For its part, the film La Operación explores the US-sponsored mass sterilization of Puerto Rican women during the 1950s and 60s: as a result, 30% of the country’s women were sterilized, without their informed consent. The women were deceived: they were led to believe that they were being treated to prevent pregnancy, but were sterilized. Preventing a pregnancy (through a birth control method) is very different from losing the capacity to give birth (through a sterilization). The programs aimed at bringing women into public birth control clinics, targeted the poor. The government held poor women responsible for the high poverty rate in the country. But mass sterilization concealed the intention of preventing the birth of poor babies. The campaign was a population control technique. In the case of Indigenous women, non-consensual sterilization jeopardized the biological and cultural reproduction of Indigenous families, thereby reinforcing the negative social effects of colonialism (including land dispossession, and forced assimilation to white culture) and oppression, and hindering the emergence of a generation of community leaders to pursue the ongoing struggle for Indigenous rights and survival. In the words of Vicenti Carpio: “The legacy of sterilization abuse for American Indians is a missing generation of children who may have learned and passed down tribal traditions, ceremonies, and language and continued the fight for cultural and political self-determination” (2004:51). References Davis, Angela (1983). Women, Race & Class . New York: Vintage Books. Latin American Film Project (1982). La Operaci ón . Sudbury, Julia (2005). Global Lockdown: Race, Gender and the Prison – Industrial Complex . New York: Routledge. Roberts, Dorothy (1995). Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty . New York: Vintage Books. Vicenti Carpio (2004). The Lost Generation: American Indian Women and Sterilization Abuse. Social Justice : 31, 4. Your Task For this assignment, students will prepare an oral presentation centered on the impact of reproductive control on the social value of Black and Indigenous or Module IV | Reproductive Control 4 Puerto Rican motherhood. In other words: what are the intersections between the reproductive regulation of women of color on the one hand, and prevailing racist stereotypes (Roberts), and colonialism on the other (Vicenti Carpio & La Operación)? And what is the what is the impact of coercive reproductive control on the social value of Black and Indigenous/Puerto Rican motherhood? For the presentation, students will incorporate Dorothy Roberts’ work, and one further source, either Vicenti Carpio or the film La Operación. That is to say, whereas Roberts is required, students will choose the second case of study, according to their own research interests. In their presentations, students will describe the selected cases (what happened and when?) and, subsequently expose their answers to the question: Why things happened? To end, students will offer their thoughts on what is to be learned from the selected cases. Guidelines • The presentation will be formal, as if the student were in front of a class. The presentation will be structured, following a clear line of thinking. Presentations will be no shorter than 5 minutes, and no longer than 7 minutes.
