Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement

Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement reveals how Black and Puerto Rican Nationalists reshaped the women’s liberation crusade.

While most people believe that the movement to secure voluntary reproductive control for women centered solely on abortion rights, for many women abortion was not the only, or even primary, focus. 

Jennifer Nelson tells the story of the feminist struggle for legal abortion and reproductive rights in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s through the particular contributions of women of color. She explores the relationship between second-wave feminists, who were concerned with a woman's right to choose, Black and Puerto Rican Nationalists, who were concerned that Black and Puerto Rican women have as many children as possible “for the revolution,” and women of color themselves, who negotiated between them. Contrary to popular belief, Nelson shows that women of color were able to successfully remake the mainstream women's liberation and abortion rights movements by appropriating select aspects of Black Nationalist politics—including addressing sterilization abuse, access to affordable childcare and healthcare, and ways to raise children out of poverty—for feminist discourse.

“Jennifer Nelson has expertly reconstructed a crucial period, just before and after Roe v. Wade, when the activist agendas of women of color reshaped the content and the goals of reproductive politics in the United States. Nelson understands—and makes an excellent case for—the proposition that a meaningful history of U.S. reproductive politics must be profoundly inflected by attention to race and class.” —Rickie Solinger, author of Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the U.S.