Beyond Pro-Choice Versus Pro-Life: Women of Color and Reproductive Justice

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The first selection that I read and analyzed comes from Andrea Smith, a Native American feminist who is involved in a number of organizations for indigenous women as well as women of color.  Her argument centers on how neither the “Pro-Life” or “Pro-Choice” campaigns are supporting life or choice for women of color in our communities.  Smith begins her essay with a critique against the Pro-Life campaign and uses the prison system and its failures to back up her argument.  Imprisoning criminals and trying to up the criminal justice system has not reduced the rate of crime, but actually increased it steadily.  The Pro-Life campaign is centered on promoting non-violence and valuing life, yet the prison system is full of violence and the criminal justice system promotes death, and it is especially prevalent among communities of color.  Another great point she mentions is about how imprisonment does not fix social problems.  This being said the criminalization of abortion would not necessarily be a solution to this matter.  Everyday people are committing crimes although they know they are punishable.  This has been proven by many studies that show how crimes rates increase when punishment becomes harsher.  Communities of color are even more at risk because of the lack of proper education and support, so if abortions were to be criminalized women of color’s reproductive rights would be in jeopardy even more than white women. The main reason for them being more at risk for getting into trouble is the amount of poverty that they experience in their areas, therefore they are in contact more with government agencies. These women who have been marginalized and have made bad choices such as drugs are less likely to seek help with any issues relating to reproduction because they afraid to be caught by authorities. On a similar note, these women are either unable to seek treatment for any type of addiction because they either cannot afford it, or the centers do not have the proper accommodations for pregnant women.  The Pro-Life campaign wants to punish women for aborting their children but they first need to think about what we can do to prevent these women from conceiving or how we can help so that they are not scared to have children because of the fear their child might come out with a birth defect because they are not able to seek treatment for some sort of addiction.