Session 11: Religious Liberty, Race & Reproduction
In recent years, there has been an onslaught of legislation and litigation curtailing reproductive rights in the name of “religious freedom.” In this session, learn how Black women in the Antebellum era and today have resisted both reproductive controls and this narrow conception of “religious liberty” by fighting to make decisions about their reproductive and family lives that reflect their own diverse religious, spiritual, and moral values.
About the speakers
Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh is an Assistant Professor in the Religious Studies department at Stanford University. Her first book The Souls of Womenfolk: The Religious Cultures of Enslaved Women in the Lower South (UNC Press, 2021) is a gendered history of enslaved people’s religiosity from the colonial period to the onset of the Civil War. It won the 2022 prize for the Best First Book in the History of Religions from the American Academy of Religion, as well as the Outstanding First Book Prize and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn Book Prize from the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD). Dr. Wells is currently at work on her second book, tentatively titled American Fetish: Witchcraft and the Invention of Black Women in the Era of Slavery; a two-volume documentary history of religion and slavery co-edited with Jordan Watkins; and an edited collection theorizing new directions in African American religious history co-edited with Judith Weisenfeld, Vaughn Booker, and Ahmad Greene-Hayes.
Brietta Clark is Fritz B. Burns Dean and Professor of Law at LMU Loyola Law School. Since joining the law school faculty in 2001, Clark has served in numerous leadership roles, including as Associate Dean for Faculty from 2015-20. She has received recognition for her mentorship by the school’s Black Law Students Association, the Judge Stephen O’Neil Trial Advocacy Mentoring Program (“Young Lawyers Program”), and the Health Law & Bioethics Student Association. Throughout her career, Clark’s research and public service has focused on inequity in the U.S. healthcare delivery and financing system – especially its effects on vulnerable populations.
Key Takeaways
Poster for anti-forced sterilization rally (Rachael Romero, San Francisco Poster Brigade, 1977), Library of Congress.
In the Antebellum era, enslaved women were stripped of their reproductive autonomy. They were subject to routine sexual assault, and had little control over whether, when, and with whom they bore children. In the context of this pervasive brutality, as Dr. Wells-Oghoghomeh explains, “surviving was a sacred act.”
In the 20th and 21st centuries, Black women have continued to face both state and private infringements on reproductive decisions. In recent years, women in prison have been subject to coercive sterilization, hospitals have partnered with state agencies to surveil low-income pregnant women, and states have passed increasingly draconian abortion bans despite tragically high rates of Black maternal mortality. Some of these measures–particularly restrictions on abortion and contraception–have been adopted in the name of protecting the religious liberty of those who oppose abortion.
Both historically and today, and inspired by their own religions, beliefs, and cosmologies, Black women have reclaimed and reasserted control over their reproductive lives. In the Antebellum era, women engaged in “delicate and intimate maneuvers to to hold pieces of themselves back.” More recently Black women founded the Reproductive Justice movement to advocate for the right of all people to have children, not have children, and birth and raise one’s children in safety, and with dignity and autonomy.
Reflection Questions
How do individuals’ religion, faith, and/or cosmology influence their reproductive decisions? What kinds of religious beliefs and voices come to mind when you think about the intersection of religion and reproduction? What beliefs and voices are left out? How does this focus on some religious beliefs over others impact laws and policies on religious liberty, reproduction, and family life?
As Prof. Clark explains, U.S. law typically describes “rights” in negative terms–as in, one’s right to be free from government interference or burdens, rather than a right to receive support or care. In contrast, the Reproductive Justice (RJ) movement speaks expansively about the rights of people, families, and communities. What laws, policies, and other measures are needed to achieve the goals of the RJ movement? How can issues like environmental justice, gun violence, policing, immigrants’ rights, and anti-poverty measures all be seen as part of the RJ movement? What is the relationship between religious freedom and reproductive justice?
Recently, several lawsuits have been filed arguing for a religious liberty right to abortion care. Some of these suits argue that abortion bans violate the religious rights of those whose faith, in some circumstances, would motivate them to end a pregnancy. Other cases argue that abortion bans are improperly religiously motivated, and thus violate church-state separation. Do you think these lawsuits should succeed? Why or why not? How do you think judges and the media will treat these claims?
Women and babies, T.J. Fripp plantation, St. Helena Island (Hubbard & Mix, 1863), Library of Congress.
Further Reading
Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh, The Souls of Womanfolk: The Religious Cultures of Enslaved Women in the Lower South (2021)
Brietta R. Clark, When Free Exercise Exemptions Undermine Religious Liberty and the Liberty of Conscience: A Case Study of The Catholic Hospital Conflict, 82 Oregon Law Review 625 (2003)
Watched this session of the curriculum and have some thoughts? We’d love to hear from you.