Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty

For white women, particularly middle-class white women, “birth control has been an emblem of reproductive liberty” (58). However, racism has long affected women’s access to contraception. For much of the 20th century, the government sponsored family-planning programs that targeted Black women. Some programs coerced Black girls and women into sterilization. In this chapter, Roberts focuses on the use of birth control for social engineering. The relationship between birth control and racism divided the Black community: Some considered birth control essential to elevating the community; others argued that abortion and contraceptives encouraged racial “genocide.”

In the late 19th century, numerous states passed laws banning the distribution of information about contraception. The Comstock Law, a federal law passed in 1873, classified all information about contraception as obscene. Those who distributed such information by mail would be subject to criminal charges.

The Supreme Court wasn’t involved in arguments about birth control until 1965. In Griswold v. Connecticut, the court ruled that Connecticut’s ban on contraceptives violated the right to privacy. The decision was “the culmination of a movement for access to birth control that began in the early twentieth century” (59). When Margaret Sanger began her activism for reproductive rights, the