Black Women and the Pill

Abstract

This article examines the politics of contraceptive pill use among Black women. Although the pill gave Black women greater control over reproduction than ever before it remains a controversial issue among them. One reason for this is the role of White-dominated birth control programs which play a role in furthering racial injustice. Aside from that the events that took place during the 1960s and 1970s in which thousands of poor Black women were coercively sterilized under federally funded programs made Black women see the pill as just another tool in White people’s efforts to curtail the Black population. More recently efforts to encourage poor Black women to use long-lasting contraceptives have resurrected the debate about race and birth control which lasted for nearly a century. The author suggests that social justice requires both equal access to safe user-controlled contraceptives and an end to the use of birth control as a means of population control.