The New Anti-Abortion Movement and Who Control Women’s Bodies
By D’Weston Haywood, PhD, Columnist
There appears to be quite a storm brewing. The storm waters began stewing as early as January 2019, when a number of state legislatures across the country—including ones in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky, and New York—began proposing or passing bills imposing restrictive, and in some cases, draconian bans on abortion. The extreme legislation—some of which could criminalize women for having a miscarriage or lift exceptions for rape—is tactically designed and intended to instigate a legal battle that might lead the Supreme Court to strike down Roe. v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that made abortion legal. The gathering storm is a direct outgrowth of pro-life organizers and politicians; however, it is also a direct outgrowth of our current wave of Nationalism in which women’s bodies are crucial.
To be sure, the fight against abortion has been building since the 1973 decision; however, the new conservative majority on the high court has certainly emboldened anti-abortion advocates. Notwithstanding, our current wave of Nationalism has also invigorated the fight with a new virulent tenor.
Under Nationalism, bodies serve as certain kinds of vehicles. The bodies of racial, ethnic, and sexual others matter profoundly under Nationalism. Through attacks on these bodies, either literally or legally through the stripping of their rights, these bodies become vehicles for the redemption of a nation thought to have lost its supposed greatness. Here, women’s bodies matter profoundly. They become the vehicle through which the nation-state is figuratively and literally made with the reproduction of new citizens who will be raised “right.”
The bodies of men also matter here too. Their bodies are vehicles for the exercise of control over the redeemed nation-state and its contents. To “Make America Great Again,” the slogan of this Nationalism, means a return to a romanticized vision of America and of gender roles. Solidifying control over women’s bodies helps solidify control over the renewed nation-state.
If Black people are deeply invested in cultivating proper manhood for Black men, so is this current wave of Nationalists for white men. Nationalism is perhaps best articulated when there is a real or perceived “crisis” in the nation that in turn ignites a real or perceived crisis in proper manhood, among other things. The crisis can range from actual threats to the nation coming from foreign enemies to perceived threats coming from millions of marching women.
D’WestonHaywood is an associate professor of History at Hunter College, City University of New York. His research and teaching center on histories of Black protest, Black cultural politics, and Black masculinity. He is currently completing a historical monograph, Let Us Make Men: Black Newspapers and a Manly Vision of Racial Advancement.
