Abortion, racism and guns: How white supremacy unites the right

[marmar]

Abortion, racism and guns: How white supremacy unites the right
Do things change? An early version of the racist "great replacement" theory drove the campaign to outlaw abortion

By TAMARA KAY - SUSAN L. OSTERMANN
PUBLISHED JULY 19, 2022 5:45AM


(Salon) White supremacy was one of the primary motivations behind the first movement to outlaw abortion in the United States. In 1858, the American Medical Association (AMA), led by Horatio Storer, launched a crusade to end abortion across the country. Prior to this period, abortion was legal in all U.S. states. Storer and white male physicians not only wanted to push women midwives — often Black, indigenous and immigrant women — out of the newly developing medical profession, but also had another, more sinister aim: these men wanted white male Protestants to politically control the country.

They feared that the growing number of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Germany and other largely Catholic countries, whom they viewed as separate and distinct "races," would produce more babies and usurp the political dominance of white Protestant Anglo-Saxon men. The reproduction of Black women, the majority of whom were enslaved at that time, was controlled by systems of white supremacy, and was not seen as a threat. Later, at the turn of the century, the focus shifted to the reproduction of women of color, many of whom were subjected to forced and coerced sterilizations in the U.S. until 1973. The white supremacist core of the movement remained the same, however.

It's important to understand that the definition of "whiteness" did not remain constant throughout that period. In the early 20th century, immigration restrictions created the conditions for consolidating the category "white," while massive immigration a few decades earlier, in the 19th century, had fragmented it. Political scientist Rogers M. Smith argues that this led to the destabilization and fracturing of the category "white," and to its replacement by a racial scheme in which the white races of Europe were considered separate and differently suited for citizenship. Many Anglo-Saxons in the U.S. believed them to be inferior races who threatened the country.

....(snip)....

According to Storer and company, the problem was abortion: Specifically, too many white Anglo-Saxon women were choosing to terminate pregnancies. In the late 1800s, the New York Times ran stories about abortions performed by Ann Trow Lohman, also known as Madame Restell, who served New York's elite and ran a lucrative mail-order abortifacient business. She became so associated with abortion that the practice was often referred to as "Restellism." As one anti-abortion pundit noted: "Restellism is murder with the Roman Catholics. Half a dozen children in every Irish family. Only two in the modern American family. What is the matter? Answer — Restellism. That is why, shortly, the children of the Emerald Isle will be walking through the graveyards of the Puritans." How did Storer and the AMA decide to solve this "problem"? By criminalizing abortion.

....(snip)....

The Second Amendment also has white supremacist roots. When it was ratified in 1791, many states had laws to prevent enslaved and free Black people from possessing or bearing arms. Prior to the Civil War, Black people were targeted by armed slave patrols, and after the war and the failure of Reconstruction, Black Codes enacted across the Jim Crow South prohibited formerly enslaved people from possessing guns. Carol Anderson, chair of African American Studies at Emory University and author of "The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America," argues that long after the abolition of slavery, the Second Amendment has been used against Black people: &quot P)ervasive anti-Blackness, even after the civil rights movement, turned the Second Amendment's law for protection — the castle doctrine, stand your ground and open carry — against African Americans." She concludes that the Second Amendment "is lethal; steeped in anti-Blackness, it is the loaded weapon laying around just waiting for the hand of some authority to put it to use." .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/07/19/abortion-and-guns-how-supremacy-unites-the-right/

[dlk]

1. White, male supremacy

n/t

[Behind the Aegis]

2. Throw in the descriptors: cis-, heterosexual, and Christian. n/t

[dlk]

3. Women aren't included

Other than as support staff

[Behind the Aegis]

4. Doesn't change the additional need of descriptors.

[dlk]

5. The are many accurate adjectives...

n/t