From Police Brutality to US Drones, Racial State Violence is an RJ Issue

“The reproductive justice framework—the right to have children, not have children, and to parent the children we have in safe and healthy environments—is based on the human right to make personal decisions about one’s life, and the obligation of government and society to ensure that the conditions are suitable for implementing one’s decisions is important for women of color.” (SisterSong)

The other day someone on Facebook sent me an article from LifeNews about how “black lives matter, even in the womb,” stating that abortion kills 19 times more black people than murder. The individual sent me the article in response to a number of posts I had made about the language of pro-life versus pro-choice after reading about this year’s March for Life.

I posted about the right to personhood as unattainable to all women; I argued that “pro-life” should be inclusive of lives beyond the unborn, such as black lives, brown lives, indigenous lives, immigrant lives and LGBTQ lives (and those with intersecting identities). A movement that supports the right to life should value the lives and personhood of those who are frequent victims of state violence. I explained that “pro-choice” does not take into account the privilege that comes with being able to make choices.

The article from LifeNews reinforced the notion that “fetal personhood” is more important or valuable than the bodily autonomy, life, health, and rights of black women. This framing is symptomatic of a larger trend where the abortion debate too often leaves out an intersectional discourse and framework, focusing solely on a woman’s choice. But the language of “choice” implies a certain privilege, that a woman can make such a choice without any regard to external social and economic circumstances. The language of choice also leaves out a discussion around fundamental human rights that people need to survive. Access to clean water is one example, which was brilliantly framed by Cortney Bouse and Elizabeth Mosley at RH Reality Check as an issue of racial inequality and reproductive justice in Detroit.

Abortion is a medical procedure that terminates a pregnancy. That’s it. This should not be compared to the murder of an unarmed black male, female, or gender non-conforming individual by a white police officer. That is an act of racial violence by the state. Access to abortion and to reproductive health care is an issue of justice. This framework emphasizes the structural inequalities—economic, social, racial, and gendered—that often determine a woman’s choice and right to have a child, to not have a child, or ability to raise a child.

The systemic murder of black youth by police is just as much a reproductive justice issue as access to reproductive health care. The right to have children, not have children, and raise your children in a safe and healthy environment, without fear of losing your child to an act of racial violence is central to reproductive health care. The systemic murder of black youth in this country is a reproductive justice issue where the state is essentially managing a specific population’s ability and right to raise their children.

Police violence and reproductive justice exist in an international climate, one that connects to the War on Terror and the use of drones. US drones have killed thousands of people in Pakistan, whose lives are basically erased by the mainstream media. Since September 11, 2001, the United States has engaged in a number of counterterrorism strategies, what are known as “preventative” measures against a racialized and criminalized population of Muslims and those who are perceived as Muslim. As a result, racist violence around the world from Ferguson to New York to North Waziristan has increasingly been overlooked by national security apologists.

Since 2004, there have been 410 CIA drone strikes in Pakistan. Between 2,426 and 3,926 deaths have been reported, 714 of which have been identified. The individuals who are killed are often portrayed, if at all, as “alleged” or “suspected militants,” even though most of their identities are unknown. This sort of reporting criminalizes the unknown victim of violence—one whose life becomes devalued and erased by the mere fact that he was supposedly, without evidence, a “terrorist.” And this is, yet again, a matter of managing a population and of reproductive justice.

When a 12-year-old boy is killed in Yemen, and we are supposed to believe that drones are targeting militants, when his death is not reported, when we are not supposed to grieve his death, the colonial mentality is apparent. Mohammed Saleh Qayed Taeiman’s life is not supposed to matter to us because of the racialized and criminalized identity that was given to him in this post-9/11 narrative of fighting terrorism.

It is the same colonial mentality that drives a similar response of devaluing the lives of black youth lost to police violence such as Mike Brown, John Crawford, Aiyanna Jones, Rekia Boyd and others. It is the same kind of racist state-sanctioned violence that prompted people around the world to respond in solidarity to the events in Ferguson with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.

Police violence against black communities in the United States, and the military violence of drones targeting Muslims in Pakistan and Yemen, are both acts of state violence and racism that occur regularly. Both are reproductive justice issues because in both cases the state is determining who can have and raise a child in a healthy and safe environment. Guilty until proven otherwise should not be a legitimate policy, and race must not dictate life and death.

We must resist the violence against all innocent Muslims with the same vigor as we do the violence against all unarmed black people. We must realize that both cases of state-sanctioned violence are central to reproductive justice.

Header image credit: Reuters/Faroq al-Shaarani