The Unconscionable Prospect of Forced Pregnancy

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine called me and told me that she was heading to the hospital because she wasn’t feeling well. I immediately became alarmed because I knew she had to be in a lot of pain if she was heading to the hospital. She typically pushed through discomfort or what she identified as “mild pain” without even batting an eye. But something was different this time: She was pregnant and about four weeks away from her due date. I remained calm on the phone with her and offered whatever comforting and optimistic words I could muster. As soon as we got off the phone, panic overcame me as I began worrying about her and my future nibling.

I knew of the harrowing statistics regarding Black women dying during childbirth as well as the data about Black infant mortality. Because of the work I do around Black women, violence, and systemic violation, I was also aware of the multitude of ways my friend could encounter anti-Blackness and misogyny when she arrived at the hospital. Would she and her baby become casualties of the U.S. medical industrial complex in which Black women’s pain is unseen and unfelt by those charged with caring for them?

My friend and nibling survived, but her story of what transpired once she was at the hospital sticks with me to this day. From being ignored when attempting to convey the agony she was in to being berated about her “unhealthiness” during her labor and delivery, what she experienced exemplified what far too many Black birthing people endure. What I remember most about her story, however, is her declaring how her birthing experience made her even more staunchly supportive of reproductive justice, and more specifically, of abortion care. She simply couldn’t fathom anyone forcefully compelling someone to potentially endure either a painful pregnancy or an excruciating labor and delivery. For my friend, to demand a pregnant person remain pregnant and give birth out of fear of being criminalized became wholly unconscionable.

Her declaration came to mind as I replayed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s implicit affirmation of forced pregnancy as a viable alternative to abortion during the oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health — a case that has the strong potential to overturn Roe v. Wade and end federally legalized abortion. One of the most striking parts of Barrett’s questions and comments pivoted around Roe’s emphasis on, in her words, the “burdens of parenting,” which, according to her, have lessened because of safe haven laws and more support for working parents, especially mothers. While her assessment of the burdens of parenting selectively omitted the absence of paid parental leave, universal child care, a living wage, and equitable, just, and affirming universal health coverage access, it was the complete erasure of the dangers and undue burden pregnancy can pose for many people that stood out most to me.

It’s unsurprising that she failed to acknowledge the differing contexts in which a person might seek an abortion. I didn’t expect Justice Barrett to consider the racially and economically disparate effects of unwanted pregnancies. I doubt that, despite being a white adoptive mother of two Black children from Haiti, Justice Barrett knows or arguably cares about the extent to which the U.S. adoption, foster care, and child welfare systems disproportionately devalue, criminalize, and devastate families of color, particularly Black and Indigenous families. Her ability to overlook the bodily autonomy of pregnant persons is reprehensible. The reality that her — and most of her Supreme Court colleagues’ — patriarchal, racist, ableist, anti-poor, and misogynistic perspectives on what pregnant people can do with their own bodies will determine the reproductive futures of millions of people is enraging.

As the argument of those seeking to uphold Mississippi’s restrictive abortion law unfolded, it became blaringly clear that the majority of those appointed to the highest court in the land believe pregnant people are simply gestational incubators. This staunchly pro-birth position doesn’t account for the myriad reasons a person may not want to be pregnant or to place a baby for adoption. My friend had a strenuous labor and delivery; she also experienced chronic and debilitating pain throughout her pregnancy. When she confided in her obstetrician about what she felt, it was dismissed as normal. Her doctor told her that “Billions of women and girls survived pregnancy before you, and you will too.” This callous disregard for her pain led my friend to try and find a Black obstetrician — which proved quite challenging because of how overtaxed the few in her area were. She went through nearly 36 weeks of what she described as immobilizing pain and suffered from depression. Throughout her pregnancy — which was planned after multiple miscarriages — she repeatedly affirmed that no person should be forced to withstand an unwanted pregnancy. I shared this belief, but it admittedly hit differently hearing it from a pregnant person who had her heart set on giving birth and becoming a parent.

The upholding of the Mississippi abortion ban, and the potential rollback of legal abortion care, would only reify a distressing figuration of bodily autonomy that demands people exercise their reproductive capacity irrespective of their desire to reproduce. It’s violently patriarchal and misogynistic.

Even if the U.S. didn’t have dismal maternal mortality rates, which undeniably can play a role in some people deciding to seek abortion care, reproduction-on-demand is a torturous throwback to what enslaved Black women endured for hundreds of years throughout the Americas. Chattel slavery, especially after the banning of the trans-Atlantic slave trade throughout the Americas, relied upon both the productive and reproductive capacities of Black women to sustain an enslaved and brutalized Black workforce. One doesn’t need to point toward the fictional Handmaid’s Tale to understand what is so repugnant about forced birthing.

I called my friend after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health arguments. We briefly chatted about the fact that the criminalization of abortion wouldn’t stop people from seeking and getting them. We both feared what that could mean. We committed to supporting organizations and collectives who would continue to fight and provide resources for those seeking safe and affordable (preferably free) abortion care. I heard my nibling playing in the background as my friend and I chatted about how abortion saves lives and livelihoods every single day. I am so grateful both she and her baby are here. I am also heartened that her birth experience made her and me even more fiercely dedicated to abortion rights.