Black women are the future of the abortion fight (Updated).
This post is a repost from an article that was originally published on January 21, 2022. “Number 1, it would be great if people with the money and power would listen more to those who are doing the work. If they listen to their inner thoughts, they might be able to sit with the discomfort they have about class and race. Laurie and I last spoke in September. The Supreme Court has not done its job despite being given the opportunity to uphold their precedent and do its job. It’s been 142 days since the law went into effect on September 1. But it has been 142 days since the law went into effect on September 1, and when presented with an opportunity to uphold its own precedent–to do its job–the Supreme Court did nothing.
Instead, the FedSoc Six on the bench decided that the Constitution doesn’t matter anymore–not when it comes to abortion rights.
The Court’s inaction has emboldened anti-abortion advocates and has set reproductive rights advocates back on their heels.
So the questions for 2022 are: What are abortion rights enthusiasts supposed to do? What is the role of reproductive rights activists? What about mainstream reproductive rights organizations?
How do the reproductive rights and justice movements move forward in a post-Roe world in which 26 of 50 states have criminalized abortion?
The answer that I keep coming back to is listen to Black women. Trust Black women.
Black women like Laurie.
People like Laurie work in the shadows, diligently putting funds together to get as many people abortion care as possible and organizing against restrictive laws. She even said to me at one point, “Girl, I’m deep in the shadows.”
It’s time for people like Laurie to emerge from the shadows. Laurie and others like her need more resources to support their grassroots work. The question is: Will they? What do they know?
Here’s the conversation that I had with Laurie. It has been edited for clarity.
Imani Gandy
: The last time we talked, it was September. Since then, Texas is now a tittering mess, and the Court has signaled that it will kill Roe with Dobbs V. Jackson. What is the next step? What should the movement do to move forward? What is it that the movement needs to do in order to figure out how to move forward?
Laurie Bertram Roberts
: I mean, I feel like number one, it’d be great if the people who have the money and the power would listen less to their internal feelings and thoughts and more to the people doing the work on the ground.
And maybe if they are going to listen to some of their internal thoughts, maybe they could sit with the uncomfortableness that they seem to have with class and race. Think about why this is. And think about why it is that they seem to only want to fund policy work, and seem to only want to fund certain kinds of people over other kinds of people.IG
: They’re funding more lobbyists and consultants as opposed to pouring money into mutual aid and that sort of thing.LBR
: Right. And my other thing would be, hold on a second, there’s this dichotomy going on right now where it’s like, you have big donors–I can’t name anything, but I’m just saying there are big donors pulling out of funding reproductive rights and reproductive justice, and saying, “Oh, well we’re now going to be doing racial justice.”
IG: As if they’re not the same.
LBR: As if they’re not connected, as if they’re not the same. People, there are no silos.
The sylos must die. They must die. Racial justice is done by reproductive justice organizations. Some racial-justice organizations practice reproductive justice. If they are doing racial injustice well, then they are also doing reproductive justice. Even if they don’t call it reproductive justice. Unless they’re being overtly sexist, right?IG
: Yes.LBR
: So we can’t just take these things apart. And you’re like, “Oh, well now we’re divesting from reproductive justice, because there’s been this critical call for
money.” Also, let’s stop acting like these big donors don’t have money to do them both.IG
: We have to get beyond a reproductive rights framework. The best framework to have these difficult conversations is reproductive justice. But people are hesitant. They are stuck in the rights framework. They’re stuck in this second-wave framework.LBR[racial justice]: I feel like the only reason they’re stuck in the reproductive rights framework–I’m just going to be honest–is because white women, that’s their framework. They reject reproductive justice because, to do it properly, one must admit that it focuses on marginalized people. So that means white ladies don’t get to be in the front no more.
IG: And they love being in the front.
LBR: And they can’t do that. They will not move their asses to the side, or even one step behind. They are happy to tell us that we should be… I mean, I have been thinking about Ida B. Wells, but I feel like we were told to stand at the back of the march again and again. And I’m like, what year is this?
IG
: And it also feels like people will say in public, yeah, reproductive justice, and listen to Black women, and trust Black women and blah, blah, blah, but in practice that never seems to work out.LBR
: Yeah. It’s okay to trust Black women, but only until you’re ready to invest money, make real decisions, or acknowledge who has done the work. They’re happy to let us do the hard work and act as mules for the movement. It’s my term. I was saying last year – well, actually, I said it in 2019 – that I don’t do any movement mammy works. I no longer do movement mammywork. You and a bunch of white women have been sabotaging your event, and you can’t even get Black people to attend. Now you want to call me and two other organizers.IG
: Right. Last minute.LBR
: Last minute. You want us to gather all the Negroes. Like we should go out and blow our horns to get everyone to come. I mean, it’s so offensive.IG
: Yeah. It is. It is. So really the bottom line is white women in the movement need to take a step back–LBR
: Because they’re trying to basically replace white men, versus actually having equity. Then you can’t actually share equity with us.IG
: They want to smash the patriarchy just long enough where there’s a little crack that they can squeeze through.LBR
: Right, because otherwise they wouldn’t be holding onto their adjacency to white power so hard.So, I mean, we’ve seen this with white women over and over again–when it comes to who it is they have an allegiance to, it’s white men.
IG: So what’s it going to take?
LBR: I honestly worry that what it’s going to take is folks really losing access. It’s going to take a lot of people losing access. We don’t even have as many middle class people anymore. There are a lot of people that think they are middle-class, but in reality they are working-class. Since the pandemic, we’ve had a lot more people call us who would have considered themselves middle-class, but couldn’t afford an abortion of $700. It’s not even possible to pay for an abortion with a credit card. It’s going be interesting, so I just think. When I say interesting, it’s in the worst possible way. I don’t mean, “Oh I’m so interested to see.” I mean in the worst way, when, and as you say, when Roe falls.
IG
: Yeah. Roe will fall. My prediction is that within a day, whatever trigger bans are in effect will be implemented. Then other states will call special legislative sessions. It’s going to be a very busy summer.LBR
: What I’m interested to see is what white women are going to do. Will they sit around and do nothing? Will they lose their shite? Are they going to just do what they usually try to do, and just whisper in white men’s ears?IG
: Have a march maybe.
LBR: Right. What are you going to actually do? I’ve heard all the talk about underground railroads. But I see very few people working, except for small groups that are always the same. What’s the problem? It’s violence. The violence white feminists commit against women of color, and the organizations led by these women. There are also these donors. I know I sound like I am on a donor roll, but this is the way we fail, because private wealthy people can decide who gets what and literally change how a state looks. They can decide who’s legitimate.
I’m also always amused that sometimes it feels like we’re in 1990s’ thinking. I started doing GOTV in , when Clinton was president. Does that make sense?
IG: Yes.
LBR: It feels like respectability. Does that make sense?
IG
: Yes.
LBR[Get Out the Vote]: It feels very much like respectability: “Don’t say abortion too much.” Folks decide who they’re going to elevate, and who they’re not. You can water the grass, and I don’t even say that other people deserve it.
