Killing the Black Body

When I read this book as a young lawyer in reproductive rights in the 1990s, it resonated deeply with the daily bias that I witnessed against my clients. Decades later, a highlight of my book tour was being invited to do a talk with Professor Roberts at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Dorothy Roberts’ exploration of “race, reproduction and the meaning of liberty” is powerful.

Her writing clearly lays out how restrictions on abortion, parenting, and access to basic health care are shaped by and also perpetuate American racism. This book inspired me to work for equity and reproductive freedom… show more.

My book and other books profiled here point to the potential of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood as an opportunity for ritual and meaning making and as lightning rods for societal expectations and norms.

In this powerful book, Roberts takes on the ways in which these opportunities are inequitably available in the United States. With maternal mortality among black women alarmingly high, this book demonstrates that the struggle for reproductive justice must be part and parcel of any rethinking of how we experience and support childbirth in the United States.

It’s not an exaggeration to say this book by Dorothy Roberts is one of the most important books I’ve ever read.

Here, Roberts lays bare how race is central to understanding the long fight for reproductive freedom in America. She maps out the different terrains of that particular battleground as it morphed from forced reproduction to eugenics and involuntary sterilization to various “bad mother” panics that advanced the notion that the key to solving societal ills lie in controlling the reproductive capability of black women. 

A sociologist and legal scholar, Robert’s analysis is meticulous and damning, without being dry or… show more.

I think it is impossible to step away from this book without seriously reconsidering the history—and very definition—of reproductive rights. In this now-classic work, sociologist and legal scholar Dorothy Roberts exposes the systematic degradation of Black women’s reproduction. From the era of enslavement (in which enslaved women, and only enslaved women, could through their reproduction increase an enslaver’s wealth) to the eugenics movement to early birth control advocacy to forced sterilization to the panic about “crack babies,” she redefines the very nature of reproductive justice.

I go back to this book again and again and so do all the people I know who are committed to understanding reproductive politics in the United States. I read and reread this book because it’s a brilliant, basic, and perennially relevant explanation of the history, politics, and legal supports sustaining racialized reproduction in the United States, from the slavery regime to its long aftermath.