Black Women Stand to Lose the Most if Brett Kavanaugh Is Confirmed to the Supreme Court
As a young adult, my grandmother told me horror stories about what life was like for black women before Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that made abortion legal in the U.S. If you had money, you had access to the services you needed. But for many of our grandmothers, aunts, and mothers, that was not their reality. These women were forced to back alleys and shady doctors to receive the care they so desperately needed. They could not afford much else.
From 1972 to 1974, the mortality rate for women of color due to illegal abortion was 12 times that of white women in New York City alone. The coat hanger was our gory reality, the DIY spirit of which lives on today for many women facing financial hardships.
Things are slightly better today, but we are still in a crisis. As a black woman in 2018's America, getting pregnant could literally kill me: Numerous studies point to a reproductive health crisis for black women. We’re dying during pregnancy and birth at higher rates than anyone else in America—numbers that mirror mortality rates in developing countries around the world.
Now, with the prospect that Brett Kavanaugh could be confirmed to the Supreme Court, it is possible that Roe v. Wade could be overturned, abortion could be outlawed, and life could become much, much worse for black women. Simply put: Black women have the most to lose if Kavanaugh is confirmed, and we will pay with our health and our lives.
As reported by Linda Villarosa in the New York Times, Zoë Carpenter in The Nation, and Renee Montagne at NPR, experts believe pregnancy is more dangerous for black women because of the stress of enduring racism in America. Other factors include having less access to resources because of that racism, as well as healthcare providers that take our symptoms and pain less seriously because of their unconscious bias against black women.
Regardless of why pregnancy is more dangerous for black women, the facts remain that it is more dangerous. Forcing us to bear pregnancies we don’t want—as would happen if Kavanaugh is confirmed—would likely exacerbate what has become a life or death situation for us.
In this way, exceptional wealth means nothing. Even billionaire Beyoncé recently shared a story about her difficulties during childbirth, following a similar story from rockstar athlete Serena Williams. Black women, no matter what their income level, are struggling to get access to high-quality care under our current system.
The Supreme Court is expected to function as a way to ensure and preserve justice for all Americans, but black women have never been able to count on our nation’s highest judges to defend and protect us. Brett Kavanaugh would shamefully worsen this problem. (Donald Trump vowed to tap only pro-life judges to the Supreme Court.) Our society still fails to recognize the abuse of black and brown bodies on which this nation was founded—and even more so, the violent control and degradation of black women’s bodies and lives. Throughout the 20th century, government agencies were targeting women of color for sterilization. From 1929 to 1974, North Carolina’s eugenics program aimed to stop poor people or people with mental illness from reproducing, but a disproportionate amount of the women ultimately targeted were black women.
For generations, the women who came before us have fought back and resisted this anti-black and anti-woman state violence in any way they could. We owe it to them—and to the women who will come after us—to do the same.
Collective liberation requires reproductive justice, defined by the National Black Women’s Reproductive Agenda as the human right to control our bodies, our sexuality, our gender, our work, and our reproduction—something we’ve historically been denied. Attaining these rights involve real access to preventative services, cultural competency training for health providers to address the bias that is killing black women, and allowing all women, especially women of color, to have a voice on policies that affect our ability to thrive.
It’s time for a reset. My organization, Women’s March, spent all of August calling on women to show up at their senators’ offices in their home states and remind them who voted them into office. We’ve continued to collect signatures and hand-deliver wire hangers to senators as a reminder of what women have been forced to do when denied the right to choose, and what women who never had any choice because of their race and economic status are still forced to do. On August 26, Women’s Equality Day, we worked with a coalition of progressive groups to organize rallies across the nation where women could echo our shared demand that the Senate keep this anti-woman candidate off our nation’s highest court.
On September 4, when SCOTUS confirmation hearings for Kavanaugh begin, a coalition of 20 women’s organizations will take this resistance from district offices to Washington, D.C. We will look our senators in the eyes as they prepare to vote and leave them with no doubt that women across America are watching. We’re taking action to #CancelKavanaugh, because we can’t afford to roll back rights women have worked for a generation to secure.
If the Senate puts Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, they’re giving him free rein to gut Roe v. Wade, criminalize abortion, and punish women for making choices about our own bodies. And they’re leaving us with no other choice than to disobey.
Black women have never shied away from taking action when our lives and those of our loved ones are on the line. We show up for everyone, and now we need members of the Senate—and women everywhere—to show up for us. Whether you feel you’ll be personally affected or not, it’s time to raise our voices until it is a rousing cry echoing in every corner, every neighborhood, every city in our nation.
DefendRoe, #BrettBye and #CancelKavanaugh aren’t just slogans or hashtags. Our lives are on the line.
Tamika D. Mallory is a nationally recognized activist well known as one of four co-chairs for the 2017 Women’s March on Washington and currently serves as co-President of the Women's March organization. President of Mallory Consulting, a strategic planning firm, and board member of The Gathering for Justice, Tamika has landed on the 2017 Time 100 Pioneers list and Fortune’s 2017 list of the World’s Greatest Leaders.
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