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Why Is America So Obsessed With Abortion? - Bustle
I've been contemplating the connection between our white supremacist society (always has been, nothing new) and the obsessive focus on abortion by right-wingers since the 60's. This piece speaks to this unholy alliance, and also goes into the obvious influence of sexism, American style, versus views on abortion in Europe over the centuries.
https://www.bustle.com/p/why-is-america-so-obsessed-with-abortion-66871/amp
It should be noted that in America, white women have historically had very different experiences with reproductive rights than women of color. While white women's reproductive lives were viewed as something to be regulated by laws or church decrees, women of color often had their reproductive lives controlled directly by the people involved in their oppression — for example, black female slaves who became pregnant were refused abortions by slave owner. Similarly, women of color have often had to fight for their right to become pregnant when they wish, in the face of state programs that forced them into unwanted sterilization and other road blocks to reproductive freedom.
And according to many historians, racist concerns about white supremacy fed much of the US's early anti-abortion culture. It might surprise you to know that, in the early part of America's history, abortion for white women was largely seen as a private matter between a woman and her church, rather than something the law must deal with. A history of American abortion laws points out that the colonies initially adopted the abortion rules from their home country — for example, in Portuguese colonies, abortion was illegal, while in English colonies abortions were legal for white women if performed prior to "quickening" (the point where the woman can feel the fetus begin to move). Professor Leslie Reagan, in her history of American abortion, has pointed out that the first laws against abortion were actually attempts to control poisoning, because herbal abortifacients which were commonly available and widely advertised in the 1800s were totally unregulated and often dangerous to the women who took them.
In the 19th century, many white American antiabortion activists thought the problem with abortion was less about violating laws or committing a Christian "sin," and more about trying to maintain high birth rates for white Americans. Historians Nicola Beisel and Tamara Kay have argued that the real hysteria over abortion in American history was about "Anglo-Saxon control of the state and dominance of society." They write:
"The arguments that physicians made to convince the public and politicians that abortion endangered society [in the nineteenth century] suggest that abortion politics in the mid-nineteenth century were part of an Anglo-Saxon racial project... While laws regulating abortion would ultimately affect all women, physicians argued that middle-class, Anglo-Saxon married women were those obtaining abortions, and that their use of abortion to curtail childbearing threatened the Anglo-Saxon race."
In other words, white women were viewed as the ones most likely to be having abortions — and to racist anti-abortion activists, that made white dominance of American society vulnerable. The white fear of "becoming a race minority" in comparison to the children of slaves and immigrants of non-white background was massive in white American culture in the 19th century, and fears about abortion fed straight into it. It was part of a landscape of anti-miscegenation laws and other legal restrictions designed to make sure that white Americans retained privilege and non-white people had less political and social power. Racist fixations on white birth rates appeared in Europe as well, but in America, it was particularly vicious: it's why Theodore Roosevelt famously declared that women of "good stock" who didn't have kids were "race criminals." Horatio R. Storer asked in 1868 whether the West would be filled with "aliens," and declared, "This is a question our women must answer; upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation."
And according to many historians, racist concerns about white supremacy fed much of the US's early anti-abortion culture. It might surprise you to know that, in the early part of America's history, abortion for white women was largely seen as a private matter between a woman and her church, rather than something the law must deal with. A history of American abortion laws points out that the colonies initially adopted the abortion rules from their home country — for example, in Portuguese colonies, abortion was illegal, while in English colonies abortions were legal for white women if performed prior to "quickening" (the point where the woman can feel the fetus begin to move). Professor Leslie Reagan, in her history of American abortion, has pointed out that the first laws against abortion were actually attempts to control poisoning, because herbal abortifacients which were commonly available and widely advertised in the 1800s were totally unregulated and often dangerous to the women who took them.
In the 19th century, many white American antiabortion activists thought the problem with abortion was less about violating laws or committing a Christian "sin," and more about trying to maintain high birth rates for white Americans. Historians Nicola Beisel and Tamara Kay have argued that the real hysteria over abortion in American history was about "Anglo-Saxon control of the state and dominance of society." They write:
"The arguments that physicians made to convince the public and politicians that abortion endangered society [in the nineteenth century] suggest that abortion politics in the mid-nineteenth century were part of an Anglo-Saxon racial project... While laws regulating abortion would ultimately affect all women, physicians argued that middle-class, Anglo-Saxon married women were those obtaining abortions, and that their use of abortion to curtail childbearing threatened the Anglo-Saxon race."
In other words, white women were viewed as the ones most likely to be having abortions — and to racist anti-abortion activists, that made white dominance of American society vulnerable. The white fear of "becoming a race minority" in comparison to the children of slaves and immigrants of non-white background was massive in white American culture in the 19th century, and fears about abortion fed straight into it. It was part of a landscape of anti-miscegenation laws and other legal restrictions designed to make sure that white Americans retained privilege and non-white people had less political and social power. Racist fixations on white birth rates appeared in Europe as well, but in America, it was particularly vicious: it's why Theodore Roosevelt famously declared that women of "good stock" who didn't have kids were "race criminals." Horatio R. Storer asked in 1868 whether the West would be filled with "aliens," and declared, "This is a question our women must answer; upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation."
27 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
are just a bunch of fucking socicopaths. But that's just one man's opinion. Cheers 
like Palin and Betsy Devos and her brother, Erik Prince. Makes me curious how the Rapture and white genocide are connected in their warped minds.
But, not only are they in power now, there are many, many more who subscribe to that belief system than many of us thought.
but also 
