Reproductive Injustice Launched a Civil War Before. It Can Happen Again.

We’ve been here before: American democracy on the brink due to the loss of reproductive rights. 165 years ago, the Supreme Court decided a family reunification case that divided the nation. The Scott family–Dred, Harriet, Eliza, and Lizzie–had their freedom taken from them when their former owner’s widow incarcerated a free Harriet, Eliza, and Lizzie and rented out their labor to maintain her income. Dred Scott organized allies in a free state and fought like hell for eleven years to be reunited with them. I write more about the Scott family and implications for reproductive justice here, but suffice it to say that the case known as an inciting event for the civil war was a case of reproductive justice because it implicated the right to have a family, not have a family and the ability to raise the families we do choose in safety and with dignity and respect.

The Scott Court found that because the Scott family was Black, they were not citizens and therefore had no rights of citizenship including the ability to self-determine their family structure. In declaring thus, the Court invalidated the Missouri Compromise–a devil’s bargain that sought to balance partisan tensions by allowing slavery in some states and freedom in others. Southern states and slavers celebrated the end of the Compromise and called for one nation unified under institutional slavery. Northern states and abolitionists cautioned that, with no guardrails in place, all of our citizenship was threatened and America’s very independence could be invalidated. A civil war ensued. Today, the guardrails are once again falling off and our country risks being torn apart by another reproductive justice case, Dobbs. 

Dobbs does not outright deny citizenship based on race, but considering the disproportionate and race based impact of abortion restrictions and criminalization, Dobbs may just be Dred Scott by another name. In addition to stripping half the nation of inherent human and constitutionally based rights to bodily autonomy, including the right of abortion, no less than a dozen states will make seeking or facilitating abortions a felony which carries with it a ban on voting. Dobbs makes a devil’s compromise by allowing states to decide whether birthing people making reproductive choices can fully enjoy rights of citizenship or whether we will become a second class of non-citizen residents unable to vote or avail ourselves of the basic freedoms outlined in the constitution. 

Black women will be most directly impacted as we are the group obtaining abortions at the highest rates in the nation (perhaps, in part, because Black women are also dying in childbirth at the highest rates in the nation). Add the fact that Black women have been described as the “most loyal democrats” 93% of whom voted to elect Joe Biden, and it becomes clear that the best solution to the democracy crisis before us today must centralize the experiences of Black women. 

Imagine if the Scott Court had engaged a reproductive justice frame and centralized Harriet and Dred Scott’s rights to bodily autonomy. The court would have had no choice but to abolish slavery because a Black birthing persons right to bodily autonomy and to raise their families in safety and with dignity and respect cannot exist alongside a system like slavery that relies on the invasion of those rights to persist. 

To meet this moment, democrats must utilize their majority to do more than compromise and secure some rights to abortion in some places. Instead, the party must engage a reproductive justice frame in all proposed policy measures. The democratic party has a chance to do what the past and current Supreme Courts did not: centralize the safety, dignity and respect of Black birthing people utilizing a reproductive justice frame. If the democratic party can make Black women’s liberation a key function of legislation, the benefits will reverberate throughout this union and reproductive freedom can (finally) be available freely and equitably to all. If the party fails to do so, all of our safety and dignity is at stake.

The leaked Dobbs opinion is just the beginning. Like the slavers after the Dred Scott decision, republicans are celebrating Dobbs as a victory and having discussions on outlawing and criminalizing abortion across the nation. Emboldened by the Dobbs decision, politicians in states like Texas, seek to erode all of our civil liberties with laws that criminalize trans youth and their families and remove immigrant youth rights to education. All of our civil liberties are at stake.    

This anti-democratic end is avoidable. If the democratic party starts at the base, Black women, and uses a reproductive justice frame to incorporate the safety, dignity, and respect of Black birthing people and their families into policy decisions, I guarantee that the benefits will reverberate throughout this union and reproductive freedom can (finally) be available freely and equitably to all.