Empowering the Margins

Abstract Reproductive autonomy has always been a contentious issue for impoverished women worldwide. Granting women control over their reproductive choices poses a threat to industrialists, who fear a decline in available labor and reduced production. The initial birth control movement, pioneered by poor Black women in the United States, aimed at breaking free from the shackles of slavery; this movement later fueled the abortion rights movement during the second wave of feminism. Before the Civil War, 20% of the US population comprised African American slaves, deliberately denied knowledge of birth control and abortion by slave owners to maintain cruel enslavement networks; in response, impoverished African American women resorted to contraceptives. By the late 1900s, women from economically disadvantaged backgrounds gained control over fertility through delayed marriages and having fewer children. Despite facing illegalities, septic abortions contributed significantly to the mortality of impoverished African American women. In the 1920s, birth control institutions emerged in impoverished communities; women from poor backgrounds, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s, protested for reproductive rights, laying the groundwork for contemporary movements. Studies revealed alarming mortality rates among poor Black and Puerto Rican women due to illegal abortions. The world’s most powerful nations sought to control the reproductive autonomy of poor women, aiming to create a larger labor force. This chapter will delve into how impoverished women were denied free reproductive autonomy and controlled by governments for their interests.