Presenter(s): Momo Wilms-Crowe − Political Science, International Studies
Faculty Mentor(s): Tim Williams
Oral Session 3SW
Research Area: Social Science
This research project examines the discourse about abortion and the 1976 Hyde Amendment in order to better understand race relations within the second-wave feminist movement. Specifically, I explore why more black women did not engage in the national debate about abortion, even when restrictive abortion legislation had a disproportionately negative effect on them. Most existing scholarship has focused either on women’s liberation and feminism, or on civil rights and black liberation. This paper, however, connects those themes by examining reproductive justice in terms of women’s intersecting identities, especially race and gender. This dual identity complicated black women’s involvement in the second wave feminist movement. Primary sources, including feminist publications, interviews, and autobiographies reveal that black women were largely absent from the pro-choice feminist discourse in the 1970s. Their silence and lack of involvement was not because access to abortion was unimportant or irrelevant to them. Rather, my research suggests that their silence was rooted in historical and ideological barriers as well as a failure of the mainstream feminist movement to consider their unique history, needs, and circumstances.