"It is clear to see how deeply abortion bans are rooted in white supremacy and patriarchal strongholds when we look at the history of Black women in this country. The tradition of disregarding the humanity of Black people is part of more than 400 years of white supremacist systems in America. Although abortion was legal throughout the country until after the Civil War, there were different rules for enslaved Black women than for white women. Enslaved Black women were valuable property. They didn’t have the freedom to control their bodies, and slave owners prohibited them from having abortions. Under the law, white men owned Black women’s bodies. So, enslaved women who had access to emmenagogic herbs — plants used to stimulate menstruation — had to make remedies to induce their own abortions in secret."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Planned Parenthood, “Abortion Is Central to the History of Reproductive Health Care in America”
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Enslaved_women's_resistance_in_the_United_States_and_Caribbean
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Enslaved women's resistance in the United States and Caribbean
Enslaved women were expected to maintain the enslaved populations, which led women to rebel against this expectation via contraception and abortions. Infanticide was also committed as a means to protect children from either becoming enslaved or from returning to enslavement.
16 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Enslaved women's resistance in the United States and Caribbean →
Related Quotes
"Many slave owners looked at black women’s bodies as a source of free labor and often forced relationships or raped en…"
"Margaret Garner, who was born as an enslaved girl, almost certainly did not plan to kill her child when she grew up a…"
"Herbal remedies to induce miscarriage were equally well known to enslaved women. Slaves often grew herbs and mixed th…"
"Black women have been aborting themselves since the earliest days of slavery. Many slave women refusing to bring chil…"
"Legend has popularized the image of the Caribbean as a woman compelled to suckle a snake all night long. This image o…"
"Throughout Antillean oral culture,” writes Maryse Conde in “La parole des femmes” (Women’s Word; 1979), “the mother i…"
"It is clear to see how deeply abortion bans are rooted in white supremacy and patriarchal strongholds when we look at…"
"Southern slaves were "the happiest, and, in some sense the freest people in the world," wrote George Fitzhugh, Virgin…"
"Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman shall be slave of free. Be …"
"Claudia Tate has observed that for female slaves "motherhood was an institution to which they had only biological cla…"