Activists confront ableism within repro rights movement

Discrimination against disabled people apparent in early literature and exploited and misrepresented by anti-choice side

(A clipping from the Salt Lake Telegram that appeared in a 1914 publication)

Ableism has troubled the reproductive rights movement since its inception in the early part of the 20th century. Many feminist and civil rights leaders have historically been portrayed as heroic and intrepid figures—with their chroniclers smoothing over the less flattering aspects of their legacy instead of addressing it.

The unwillingness to confront that has opened the door for antiabortion writers and thinkers to misrepresent the past and misquote birth control figures with the aim of chipping away support among disabled people and those belonging to minority communities.

Eugenics was widespread at the beginning of the 20th century. County fairs had “human stock competitions,” which functioned in the same capacity as those for livestock. Judges would determine who was of the best breeding. Naturally, ableist tendencies grew and worsened from that culture.

Margaret Sanger’s recent historical reevaluation has much to do with her connection to that. Anne Finger, a prominent disability activist who also has been heavily involved in the repro rights movement, explained why it’s important to write the full and accurate account of her life.

“I don't think it can really be reconciled,” Finger said. “I mean, I think we have to say, there was this movement, it was enormously important in women's lives, it was enormously important in children's lives.

“And it has this very mixed history and I think to try and reconcile it means it's going to be somehow smoothed out and taken care of. And I think really, what we have to do is to look at it and acknowledge it honestly.”

Prominent Black writer Angela Davis made the point in one of her early essays about how the failure to self-evaluate had led to distrust growing among suspicious black women who had heard about sterilization within hospitals they sought care in. Davis also criticized Margaret Sanger and the early birth control movement’s embrace of eugenics.

While Sanger was certainly guilty of ableism with her publication of The Pivot of Civilization, it is less clear that she had intolerant views of Black people. Much of her work has been misread, misrepresented and authors have cited one intolerance to indicate that she held another. Sanger opened birth control clinics in black neighborhoods, trained black doctors and wrote essays calling for the liberation of black people through family planning. She was also praised and featured in the Pittsburgh Courier, a leading black newspaper at the time that set the tone for the nation’s ethnic community.

It's also apparent from some scholarship that ableism wasn’t exclusively a problem within the white community. An Atlanta University student paneled several Black Atlanta ministers about their views regarding birth control, sterilization and abortion. Fifty-seven of them approved sterilization in cases in which a handicapped person was considered.

The ableism of one doesn’t excuse or justify the ableism of the other. Instead, when discussing historical figures, it’s important to acknowledge the intolerances that they had so that we can be cognizant of the ones that we’re perpetuating today—whether we are willful in it or not.