This morning, I turned on the news and there was a report of increasing numbers of investigations and prosecutions of women for terminating their pregnancies after the 6th month of pregnancy; between 2023-23, 29 women have faced investigation for illegal late term abortions, spontaneous abortions (miscarriages) and stillbirths – 6 of these women have been charged.
What many people do not realise is that abortion in England and Wales (in North Ireland abortion was decriminalised in 2019) is only allowed under a specific series of circumstances, under 24 weeks and with the approval of two doctors under the 1967 Abortion Act. It has never been decriminalised. If your pregnancy falls outside of the limits, you can be sentenced under the 1861 “Offenses against the Person Act” to life in prison. 30 organisations (including medical, legal, and public health bodies) have called for Parliament to decriminalise abortion arguing that this is a healthcare issue and not a criminal one; they are calling for an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill.
The fact that abortion itself has not been decriminalised in England and Wales is just an example of the lack of bodily autonomy that impacts women in this country and unfortunately throughout the world. Whenever we look at the history of the struggle over reproductive rights, we need to understand that the differences that women historically have faced in being granted the right of property in their own bodies which white men do have historically, is an indication of the way in which women are treated in the societies in which we live. We are infantilised, we are dehumanised as somehow unable to make basic decisions about our bodies and our futures. Much of the struggle women have fought for equality and against their oppression in capitalist society is far broader than bodily autonomy, but without bodily autonomy you are not viewed as a functioning human being, as an adult in the societies in which you live; your agency as a human being is denied in the absence of bodily autonomy.
The other group of people that are facing attacks on their bodily autonomy are trans people (in the UK, puberty blockers are indefinitely banned which is viewed as an existential threat by trans people and organisations in solidarity. Accessing medical and social support is difficult (long waiting lists just to be seen to get support to transition, insufficient medical and social support) and trans people have been forcibly sterilised in many countries in order to transition. Human agency is being ignored and this has become a highly politicised issue in the UK and it is also one of the reasons that there is no general women’s movement in the UK due to transphobia in sections of the women’s movement. So rather than organise together to fight for everyone’s bodily autonomy, instead the women’s movement is characterised by being trans inclusive or exclusive which is undermining what should be a mutual fight for bodily autonomy.
Politicisation of health care access
Whenever health care is politicised (which is the case for women’s reproductive health care and trans health and social support) which is not limited to the actions and beliefs of the right and far-right, it is the marginalised in our societies who bear the brunt of these attacks. We also need to understand the intersectionality of oppressions and their systemic nature; the impact of misogyny, racism, disablism and LGBTQI+ phobia means that our experiences and history are different. When you factor in class as well, you recognise that reproductive rights is simply not enough to describe the situation.
Disabled people are routinely treated as children or asexual; racism led to medical experimentation on enslaved Black people as well as the inability to access treatment when needed. This has meant (and still means) different treatment of people of colour not being able to access healthcare specific to their needs (the higher level of maternal mortality of black women is an expression of systemic racism inherent in medical care) as well as the abuse of Black people.
Poverty has an impact as well; accessing health care in a country like the US is still difficult rather than removing health insurance and establishing full access to healthcare, the insurance industry still control access to healthcare; even with access to Medicaid, (funded federally, but states determine who can access it). Different states cut-off point is below the poverty level; even the Medicaid expansion of the Affordable Care Act, many states have not implemented it leaving many of the poorest without healthcare. That healthcare depends on our ability to buy insurance or the limits put in place in some states means that built-into the system itself are massive inequalities both in access and care itself.
The Guttmacher Institute has also examined the impact of the overturn of Roe (the Dobbs Decision) on access to birth control which they argue is a general attack on bodily autonomy. Moreover, that these attacks have begun in the same way as the attacks against abortion; by targeting specific communities of people, those needing gender affirming care, those needing infertility care and support and limiting a wide variety of available contraceptives, limiting choice that is appropriate to different people.
Reproductive justice
Younger women of colour and poor women were forced onto Norplant and then Depo-Provera which has a longer-term impact, they are forced to use IUDs, which require doctors or medical professionals to implant which reduces choice. While middle class white women required their husbands’ signatures to be voluntarily sterilised. Women of colour and disabled people faced sterilisation abuse which removed their ability to have children permanently without their consent and often without their knowledge.
From the International Justice Resource Center:
“Sterilization, when performed without informed consent, violates an individual’s rights to dignity, humane treatment, health, family, information, privacy, and to freely decide the number and spacing of children, among others. Forced sterilization removes a person’s ability to reproduce, usually permanently and irreversibly. In some instances, governments authorize these procedures, as is the case when national laws require transgender persons to undergo sterilization in exchange for official recognition of their gender identity. In other instances, governments fail to prevent forced sterilization through appropriate oversight and regulation; and, in many places, governments continue to deny redress to survivors, including those sterilized pursuant to prior eugenics and population control policies.”
When you get to reproductive health care, that is, accessing contraceptives of your choice and abortion rights and voluntary sterilisation, glaring differences start to appear. A fundamental problem historically is that the incipient birth control movement was closely linked to the eugenics movement in many advanced capitalist countries. Contraceptives were marketed to the poor and working class; hence coercion in contraceptive use and sterilisation were pushed on the poorest, on disabled people, on people of colour whose population growth was viewed as bring down the human race” and/or poor and reliant on government assistance (welfare). The concern of rising populations of “undesirables” was unfortunately fundamental to which groups were targeted by the birth control movement and the eugenics movement. Eugenics is what underlay anti-miscegenation laws in many states, eugenics sterilisation laws and laws preventing immigration to keep out undesirables. Disabled women are still advised not to have children in Britain.
So, a concerted campaign to limit “undesirables” from having children meant that different rules applied to different types of people. Many people associate the development of eugenics with Nazi Germany; that is incorrect, it had a long history before the Nazis existed and continued in the US after the Nazis were defeated. Eugenics societies were created to “improve” the human race (this initially meant more exercise, eating better).It should not be surprising that those that did not have desirable characteristics determined by this groups would become the victims of eugenics before the Nazis murdered disabled people in the Aktion T4 programme and the genocide of Jews and Roma and Sinti .This has continued since against indigenous women and other women of colour. While I am concentrating on the US, this is an international problem and continues today.
In the US, the creation of eugenics boards who could adjudicate on forced sterilisation of “undesirables” in the period from 1897 (Michigan) to 1963. In 1924, Virginia passed a broad eugenics law allowing for eugenics sterilisation The first people to face eugenic sterilisation were disabled people (or those viewed as “feeble”). “Feeble” didn’t just apply to developmental impairments, it also applied to those who were uneducated – which if you think of the time period could apply to the broad majority of the working class. Eugenics boards also targeted poor black women especially in the US South, like North Carolina.
The Supreme Court decision of Buck vs Bell (1927) enabled the creation of eugenics boards in various states allowing sterilisation of disabled and “feeble people” as well as multiple criminal offenders who were deemed immoral (think of sex workers). Unmarried women that had children were also affected as well as their children (as though their immorality somehow affected their gene pool rather than being socially generated due to poverty). Sterilisation of prisoners (punitive; but still eugenic) especially multiple offenders was common. In 1942, the Skinner Vs Oklahoma decision made punitive sterilisation unconstitutional on the basis of the due-process clause and the equality clause. But what needs to be understood is that these punitive sterilisations were much smaller in number than eugenics sterilisations which continued; moreover, the estimated 64,000 eugenics sterilisations that occurred in the US were not done by prisons or on convicts.
Buck vs Bell has never been overturned, but states moved to disband eugenics boards following WWII, but disabled people can still be sterilised without their consent by their guardians under laws existing in many US states. While Skinner made forced punitive sterilisation illegal, we know that 148 black women prisoners were sterilised in California after having children as recently as 2006-2010.
Racism and colonialisation has long played a strong role in forced sterilisations in the US, impacting Native American women and girls (who were sterilised from the 19th and 20th centuries, although it came to light in the 1960s and 1970s) and which along with forced removal of children from their tribes and homes amount to genocide. Then there is the attempt to sterilise people to reduce welfare expenditure as well as their future numbers which Black women (especially, but not limited to the south in the 1970s, see the Relf sisters who were forcibly sterilised in Alabama in 1974), Mexican and Chicana women in California and Puerto Rican women fell victim to. From the 1930-1970s, one third of the women in Puerto Rico was sterilised; the trials of the Pill were conducted in Puerto Rico where birth control laws were less strict that in the mainland US. What needs to be understood is that these forced sterilisations occurred using US government funding and were deliberate. In the 2020s, immigrant women were forcibly sterilised in a for-profit ICE detention centre.
Many far-right organisations support eugenics and we are seeing a revival of eugenics again. Many of these groups are openly misogynist and use the nonsense they are “protecting” women from threat, even though they are the biggest threat to women’s social, economic and political inequality. Much of the nonsense in replacement theory (white Christians men being replaced by immigrants, white Christian men feeling that they are losing their privileges, Muslims are replacing white Christian men is a favourite in European Christian nationalism) is tied to eugenics arguments which are racist in origin. Eugenics again reared its ugly head; during the Covid pandemic, disabled and elderly people were put on DNR orders and died in far greater numbers offered denied treatment. This was certainly the case in Britain, Italy and Spain (I am sure that it happened elsewhere).
Using reproductive justice as a criterion recognises that racism, misogyny, disablism, and queer phobia are intertwined; it recognises that these structural and systemic oppressions and poverty means that we recognise that we are not treated equally and that many of us have faced further oppression due to being considered “undesirable” and deserve compensation for historical injury and injustice.
In the US, people are being forced to do ballot measures to get around legislatures controlled by right-wing and religious people (largely justified by some “Christian ethics” but actually good old-fashioned misogyny). But many ballot measures have become harder to pass (see Florida for example where the right-wing has weaselled their way around several ballot measures by increasing the percentage required to pass. In Florida for example the measure at the same time as the Presidential election had a threshold of 60 per cent – and acheived ‘only’ 58 per cent.
This is further reinforced by gerrymandering voting districts to increase the number of victorious far-right politicians elected. These then use their legislative majorities to limit the impact of progressive ballots that are agreed – for example by further reducing term limits. Democracy is the US is becoming risible; it is important that we come out to protest both what has done and what is continuing to stand together in solidarity.
The resulting abortion bans in many states has increased the number of women dying unnecessarily as they are not able to get reproductive healthcare in their states. The refusal of those states that have put in abortion bans to actually investigate whether there are increase deaths deriving from abortion bans (they will publish those that have died of an abortion, of course) will not hide the reality of what they have done; prioritising a foetus over the lives of women in their states. Doctors will wait rather than do a D&C on women that are miscarrying out of fear of the loss of their licenses. Laws like those passed in Ohio where ectopic pregnancies must be transplanted to the uterus (as yet not medically possible) are also a danger as doctors could be arrested for abortion-murder if the zygote was viable.
Moreover, the next danger relates to attacks on access to contraceptives and concern that the current Supreme Court may overturn Griswold vs Connecticut (1965) which established both the right to privacy as well as the right of married couples to access contraceptives. If Griswold is overturned, that will impact other cases based on the right to privacy, like unmarried people and young people accessing contraceptives; the right to Gay Marriage and Gay Sex is also under threat. Already attempts to use the Comstock Act (1873) to prevent the use of medication abortions drugs being sent by mail; expect additional attempts by right-wing legislatures and jurists to continue these attacks against access birth control, reproductive health-care.
According to the Guttmacher institute, attacks on reproductive healthcare during 2024 include the following:
Limiting access for young people
- Abortion support bans (preventing adults from helping young people get abortions)
- Requiring parental consent to access contraceptives
- Gender-confirming care-bans (bans of puberty blockers, preventing parents from supporting their trans children on penalty of prison). Unsurprisingly, these same states are also those that are pushing abortion bans
- Restricting sex education (at least 28 states have done this)
For adults
- Preventing access to infertility care (limiting access to IVF treatment)
- Attacks on accessing contraceptives in 8 states.
- Expanded funding of anti-abortion centres
- Criminalising pregnancy outcomes like spontaneous abortions (miscarriage) and the targets of course are black and white women with lower incomes who are in danger of criminalisation.
Add to everything else that women are still trapped in part-time jobs doing traditional women’s labour; this means that despite massive increases in education, we are still doing work which is undervalued and underpaid. One would think the pandemic which has revealed the importance of women’s labour would have an impact, but it hasn’t. In Britain, there has been a shrinking of wage differentials between men and women, but that is due to men’s wages falling. This is not what we were fighting for!
The People’s March (and the Women’s March 2025)
On 18 January, there are various forms of women’s protests (e.g., marches, vigils, static protests) that are happening in the US and in other countries (UK, Poland, Canada, Mexico) in solidarity with women in the US. These marches are organised by Peoples March and those standing in solidarity against misogyny, racism, disablism and queer phobia. They are organised to support the bodily autonomy of women and trans people, to fight for reproductive justice, and against violence against women and girls, and to support abortion and reproductive healthcare. Marches are being held throughout the US, find the one closest to you or whose politics you are more comfortable with and join them. Rights to bodily autonomy and reproductive rights are being eroded regularly; we must stand together to oppose them.
All who stand for human rights and freedom over fascism are welcome. We all march for different reasons, but we march for the same cause. If you believe that decisions about your body should remain yours, that books belong in libraries, not on bonfires, that healthcare is a right, not a privilege for the wealthy; if you believe in the power of free speech and protest to sustain democracy; or if you want an economy that works for the people who power it—then this march is for you.”
The US Women’s March was created in 2017 after the inauguration of Donald Trump, to protest against rising misogyny, attacks against abortion rights and reproductive healthcare, racism and inequality, LGBTQI+ issues, economic inequality and poverty, access to healthcare and the environment as women’s issues (women, especially indigenous women, are been in the leadership of the environmental women in the global south.
Notably, the leadership of the organising group contained large numbers of marginalised women (women of colour) as compared to previous marches of women and this is still the case (see the sponsors and partners); this was notable due to the fact that white middle class women and liberal feminists have traditionally dominated the leadership of women’s and feminist organisations and protests in the US. This shift and the concentration on intersectionality reflected the reality that younger women understood, and for that matter reflected a shift in the politics of the feminist movement towards a position of inclusivity to ensure that the needs of marginalised women (e.g., women of colour, trans women, poor women, LBTQI+, disabled) were actually heard and their demands addressed. As such, the demands were broader reflecting both a shift in the feminist movement, as well as the participation of women of colour whose specific forms of repression, access to healthcare (as well as reproductive healthcare), cultural and social issue, segregated job markets commensurate with low pay, need for childcare and social care. This does not mean that everyone on the protest necessarily agreed, but they recognised the danger of the incoming Trump election. Unsurprisingly, all the dangers that Trump represented have were not overstated; the damage to the Supreme Court by the appointment of far-right judges led to the overturn of Roe vs Wade and sent abortion rights back to the states.
Rather than glass ceilings or lean-in feminism (as though it is our fault that we have been silenced in this system), we need to ensure that the majority of women get a better deal from the capitalist system; we still face the reality that equal pay for equal work (enshrined in laws) has not been achieved. Many women are trapped in segregated labour markets; which means that we are not even doing the same work as men and hence equal pay for equal work just doesn’t cut it.
Solidarity protests are happening in Britain around the country; there are over 20,000 people registered on FB and the list of marches can be found here. These marches are inclusive and many are disabled accessible. Here is the route in London.
So get it together, grab a ground of friends, and go to the protest if you can. If not put a poster in your window … we need to stand together!! We will never go back!!
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