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Anti-Abortion Rights Billboards Encourage Distrust of Women of Color. Again.
Last week, anti-abortion rights billboards in Atlanta targeted the black community again. In 2010, the same group sponsored billboards declaring "black children are an endangered species." This time, the message says: "The 13th Amendment Freed Us. Abortion Enslaves Us."
This is just the latest billboard in a national campaign to target women of color and shame them out of utilizing their legal reproductive options. Earlier this month, an anti-abortion rights group in Los Angeles targeted Latinas with their bilingual billboard campaign that said, "The most dangerous place for a Latino is in the womb."
Sadly, these tactics have been around for a while. In February, Life Always targeted black women in New York City and Chicago. The New York City billboard made the same charge that a woman's womb is the "most dangerous place" for African Americans, and featured a photo of a little girl (whose mother, by the way, was not informed that her picture would be used for this purpose).
The Chicago billboard included a photo of Barack Obama alongside text that said "Every 21 minutes our next possible leader is aborted." All the billboards have been removed in response to public outcry but this has not stopped more from accumulating. Apparently supply does not always follow demand.
Perhaps the most shocking recent billboard came from an individual. Greg Fultz, a 35-year-old man in New Mexico, paid $1,300 out of pocket to promote his anti-abortion message after two sponsors dropped their support. The billboard, which went up in May, features a photograph of Fultz with the graphically-inserted silhouette of a baby in his hands and reads, "This Would Have Been A Picture Of My 2-month Old Baby If The Mother Had Decided To Not KILL Our Child!"
Fultz admits he is unsure whether his ex-girlfriend had an abortion or a miscarriage (her friends say it was a miscarriage), but maintains that the billboard promotes a larger message. His ex-girlfriend took him to court June 8, and a judge ordered Fultz to remove the billboard on June 23.
Beyond the gross misrepresentations in this billboard, Fultz violated his ex-girlfriend's privacy, and he may very well have endangered her, given the violent tendencies of some anti-abortion rights individuals.
All of these billboards are offensive and demeaning. They vilify women of color by portraying them as dangerous to their children and abortion as an unviable choice. These groups cite statistics about how women of color are more likely to seek abortions without attempting to address the underlying economic issues.
Furthermore, they objectify or completely erase women by focusing on "the womb" or a potential father or the fetus as a future leader instead of the mother as a human being capable of making her own decisions. They discourage women of color from seeking proper family planning care by shaming those who may see abortion as their best option as pariahs of their race.
Most of all, they make me nostalgic for the good old days when misogynistic people and groups said it with a Hallmark card.
Wait, don't answer that...I took the liberty of searching for myself, and found that NOW largely supports affirmative action, and speaks very positively about it.
I don't think there's anything that is necessarily wrong about supporting affirmative action; in fact it's a fairly noble cause. We know that there are racial disadvantages that lead to lower representations of minorities at higher levels of education and employment. However, affirmative action seeks to root out an indirect problem. The more direct problem of affirmative action is not race, but rather poverty. Many racial minorities are concentrated in impoverished communities. However, this does not mean that there are no individuals of minority races that are relatively privileged, even compared to the "majority."
My point is not to make a diatribe against affirmative action - that's another issue entirely - but rather, to point out an inconsistency in NOW's logic and coverage, or at least that of this columnist, who states, "These groups cite statistics about how women of color are more likely to seek abortions without attempting to address the underlying economic issues."
If you want to play that game, then you must also concede that affirmative action would be better suited to lend aid to underprivileged individuals, rather than to racial minorities. In doing so, aid would implicitly be lent to minorities.
It might be true that these advertisements "vilify women," but I think that analysis fails to take the bigger picture into consideration; that is, that the point is to vilify abortion, to point out that it is concentrated among those who are underprivileged: racial minorities.
Like I've said, the cause of affirmative action supporters is noble. However, I would similarly say that the cause of these billboard folks are noble. (Well, Fultz sounds like a downright jerk with too much money on his hands, but that's a different story. I'm speaking on the former.)
As with any special interest, NOW is playing a political game. Appropriate logic is only applied where it is beneficial to the cause of those with the power. That's fine - but NOW must remember that if it wishes to be critical of special interests, it must also be critical of itself.
If they want to vilify abortion, they need only point out the supposed immorality involved; obviously, bringing race into it is arbitrary and pointless. Why don't they have billboards that say, "The most dangerous place for a white child is in its mother's womb."? Or why don't they go with "Jewish child" or "Christian child"? Um, are you getting it yet?
This was a very well-written article.
Don't feed the trolls.
I want to note a difference between the ad in question and the way you and the columnist are talking about the ad. The ad states, as quoted in the column: "The most dangerous place for a Latino is in the womb."
No mention of children, no mention of women, no mention of mothers. Certainly these things are implied, but the words are never brought into it. Maybe this is because the attempt is, as I say, not to vilify women, but to vilify abortion.
And I feel that it is completely untrue to say that "bringing race into it is arbitrary and pointless." It's not arbitrary at all; in fact, it's based on trends that are well-documented. Similarly, it's well-documented that racial minorities are concentrated in underprivileged communities. So in discussing poverty in the United States, would it be irrelevant to bring up race?
You are right - the first amendment is important in that it gives us the right to free speech. What is not morally right is for people to use that free speech to terrorize those seeking abortions. The issue that this article was seeking to deal with is that in our society we have an issue with distrusting women of color to make the right decisions for themselves. By creating billboards like the ones described above, we are sending the message that WOC should not be making their own decisions because we know better than they do what they should be doing with their bodies. Abortion at its core is what gives women the ability to not be pregnant and therefore to not be controlled by pregnancy. A society cannot be advanced until its women can control when and when they are not pregnant.
" Abortion at its core is what gives women the ability to not be pregnant and therefore to not be controlled by pregnancy. A society cannot be advanced until its women can control when and when they are not pregnant."
What gives women the ability to not be pregnant is, first, knowing how one becomes pregnant. Second, taking the necessary measures to prevent it if one does not wish to become pregnant, which begins with condoms and/or birth control, if one is going to excercise the knowledge from point one.
Your last statement is perplexing. I cannot understand how deciding to have a family, or not, prevents society from advancing.
In regard to the billboards, perhaps the issue that could be addressed is why it is addressing WOC. Your post infers that it is a mistrust in WOC of being able to make decisions. What if it isn't? By assuming that a billboard "terrorizes" those seeking abortions, you are, in turn, inferring that one choice is good, and the other is "terror".
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