Welcome to the AWBW's July Black Women's Day!

The Alliance of Women for Black Women is a group of women who center the issues Black women and girls face by observing and sharing with others how misogyny uniquely impacts Black women. We do this through a monthly Black Women's Day, which is the 19th of every month!

This month, we'll be focusing on the United States Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade, a court case that became a legal landmark for many different protected rights - but particularly for the federal right to abortion. While the overturning will have an extensive impact on all women, Black women are even more likely to face the negative impacts that will come with this decision.

Black women are 13% of the female population, but 40% of the women who get abortions in the US.

According to Planned Parenthood, a chain of reproductive health clinics in the US, 1 in 4 US women overall will receive abortion care in their lifetimes.

Many people feel uncomfortable by the reality of how many Black women undergo abortion procedures, but the truth is, there's a plethora of factors that have contributed to this disproportion. It's not because Black women are hypersexual, careless, or irresponsible.

Black women have higher rates of sexual assault than any other group of women in the US, and it often goes unreported. Abortion access for these women and girls allows them to protect themselves and their privacy. Source

Not only are young Black women failed when it comes to adequate sex education, there are often taboos about sex and proper reproductive and sexual care that many youth of color face. Abstinence is one of these taboos, where rather than teach kids about how to safely have sex, they are taught to not do it at all, which can result in ignorance and shame around seeking birth control and other types of reproductive healthcare.

Source

To add on to this, only 17 states actually require sex ed program content to be medically accurate. Only 10 states legally require the program to provide instruction that is appropriate for a student’s cultural background and that is not biased against any race, sex or ethnicity.

Source

Abortion bans also endanger the lives, physical health, and legal innocence of women who have miscarriages. Black women have an overall higher rates of miscarriage, stillbirth, and preterm birth than white and Hispanic women. This means that not only will Black women in states where abortion is completely banned be allowed to get proper post-miscarriage care, they may also be subject to legal investigation under suspicion of getting an abortion when they actually do seek out healthcare for miscarriages and stillbirths. Given the violent and brutal history of the justice system’s treatment of Black people, these policies will have a consequential impact on Black women. Source

State-level abortion restrictions have already taken effect in at least eight states, and in total, 22 states have laws that impose very strict restrictions on abortions. Those states are home to 39 percent of the total US population, but 45 percent of Black women and girls under age 55. Source

What can we do to help?

Go to https://keepourclinics.org/ to help independent abortion clinics. Independent abortion clinics are community-based reproductive health clinics. The people who staff these clinics are highly trained healthcare professionals who provide essential, time-sensitive abortion services, often to people with the fewest resources, who need them the most. In fact, independent clinics serve three out of every five patients in the U.S. each year who have an abortion.
Support Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood doesn’t just provide abortion services to women and girls, they provide all kinds reproductive healthcare and birth control procedures - so even if you don’t personally support abortion, you help provide the education and services necessary to women and girls to prevent unplanned pregnancies that may result in abortions. Go to plannedparenthood.org to find your nearest clinic, and to connect you to events in your area!

Thank you for joining our July campaign! We hope we've reached our goal by informing and mobilizing you - remember to join us again next month, on August 19th!

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse