Fear of a black (and working-class) planet: young women and the racialization of reproductive politics.

Abstract

Racialized and class specific as well as gendered heterosexuality is compulsory for young women. Substantial academic literature addressed the incidence of premarital adolescent heterosexual intercourse paying particular attention to young working-class women and (especially in the US) to young women of color. During the 1980s, journals and academic texts in the US debated the so-called black underclass disregarding the effects of Reaganomics: increasing poverty, homelessness, ill health, and unemployment, which affected young African-American women. From a traditional (hetero)patriarchal standpoint, any teenage pregnancy is a problem. Hence pregnancy avoidance and planned parenthood focus on young working-class women and young women of color presumed to constitute the problem of the (hetero)sexually active teenager. The ideology of fetal rights as used in anti-abortion and pro-life arguments represents the life of a pregnant woman as in direct opposition to that of her fetus. The ideology of adolescence constructs all young people as inherently prone to irresponsibility, especially if they are female, working-class, and black. In the Third World, young women considered as irresponsible mothers more likely face enforced sterilization than access to abortion in the guise of genetic counseling for disabilities or without explicit consent during other gynecological operations. Feminists point out that under current legislation in England and Wales, fetuses defined as seriously handicapped can be aborted up to the moment of birth. The legacy of eugenicist ideas lives on in assumptions about the inherent deficiencies of young working-class women, young women of color, and young women with disabilities as potential mothers. Yet despite the institutional, cultural, and ideological force of appropriate heterosexual and reproductive activity, young women continue to challenge common sense definitions of normality and deviance.