Reproductive Rights Through Class and Race: Confronting Discomfort, Redefining Liberation

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n this post, I want to delve deeper into the troubling history behind certain medical advancements, particularly how reproductive freedoms have often been designed to target women deemed “undesirable” by the system. These women were frequently women of colour or white women from working-class backgrounds, highlighting the intersection of racism, classism, and sexism in reproductive health policies.

During the second wave of feminism, many white feminists championed reproductive rights, but they often failed to address the painful history and trauma experienced by Black women due to medical experimentation and forced sterilisation—practices that persisted well into the 20th century in the United States.

While contraception can be celebrated as a milestone in women’s liberation, its history is also deeply entwined with misogynoir—a term that describes the unique forms of discrimination faced by Black women. Scholars like Angela Davis have shed light on how Black women’s experiences with contraception have been vastly different from those of white, predominantly middle- and upper-class women.In Women, Race, and Class, Davis documents the brutal history of forced sterilizations endured by Black women and recounts how, during slavery, enslaved Black women were subjected to sexual violence and, in some cases, induced their own abortions to prevent their children from being born into inhumane conditions.  Davis underscores that while reproductive freedom has been a critical issue, Black women’s experiences with contraception and reproductive control have been far more complex and fraught with coercion and violence.

To build on this discussion, I want to incorporate insights from Eleanor Cleghorn’s work, which examines how reproductive health advocacy has often been rooted in or influenced by eugenics ideologies. Specifically, I’ll focus on two prominent figures in the history of reproductive rights: Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes. Their contributions to reproductive freedoms were significant, yet their advocacy was often entangled with troubling eugenics-driven ideas about who “deserved” to reproduce.

I also aim to explore the UK’s role in this history. Much like the United States, the UK has a legacy of targeting women of colour and working-class women through policies and practices that sought to control reproduction. These histories compel us to reflect critically on how movements for reproductive rights have intersected with systems of oppression and exclusion.

Reproductive rights and sex positivity- freedom or control?

Let’s start by discussing Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes. Sanger was an American-based activist, while Stopes was based in Britain. Both women came from middle-class and privileged families, and their activism was shaped by the 19th-century Victorian sensibilities. Whether consciously or not, they perceived the working class as innately depraved, enslaved to their animalistic instincts (Bacchi 1988)

As mentioned in my previous post, Sanger was one of the key figures supporting the Enovid Trial in Puerto Rico. Alongside Katherine McCormick, she funded this significant research project. Sanger, a public health nurse, evolved into a social activist advocating for better sex education and contraception. Her shift towards activism was driven by witnessing women resorting to illegal and dangerous methods to perform abortions. Many of her patients were immigrant women from Jewish and Italian communities, who often endured the so-called ‘£5 abortion’ procedure. Those unable to afford it faced severe health risks, a situation Sanger knew well, having grown up with 11 siblings and seen her mother gravely ill due to multiple pregnancies (Cleghorn 2019, Planned Parenthood 100 )

Sanger’s activism in New York challenged the Comstock Law of 1869, which prohibited the publication and distribution of information on birth control, reproduction, and health, deeming it obscene. Initially a socialist, Sanger published “What Every Girl Should Know” in The Call, a socialist monthly discussing puberty. However, she grew disillusioned with socialism, feeling it didn’t fully support bodily autonomy. Abandoning socialism, she spent the rest of her life advocating for reforming capitalism with a strong welfare state (Cleghorn 2019, Planned Parenthood 100 ).

In 1914, she boldly published The Woman Rebel, her own paper that defied the Comstock Laws, almost calling women, particularly working-class women, to arms against the ‘slavery of motherhood.’ This act led to criminal charges, but it didn’t deter her (Cleghorn 2019, Planned Parenthood 100 ).

Sanger continued to spread education on birth control, eventually publishing a book titled ‘Family Limitation’, which included illustrations demonstrating common birth control methods. The book became immensely popular, translated into 13 languages, and sold 10 million copies, becoming a cornerstone of the early birth control movement (Cleghorn 2019, Planned Parenthood 100 ). Unfortunately, her work was not appreciated by authorities adhering to the puritanical Comstock law, leading Sanger to seek refuge in England to escape charges. Eventually, Sanger returned to the USA and opened a birth control clinic in Brooklyn on October 16, 1916, which evolved into what is now known as Planned Parenthood (Cleghorn 2019, Planned Parenthood 100 ).

There is no doubt that Sanger sympathised with the eugenics movement, which in the early 20th century was considered a legitimate science for improving society through careful breeding to control population and reduce undesirable genetic attributes such as hereditary diseases(Cleghorn 2019, Bacchi 1988). This viewpoint propagated ableist notions, with Sanger herself stating she wanted to reduce the number of children born with ‘feeble minds and bodies.’ This movement and its ‘ideals’ were further deployed by others to perpetuate racist notions of white supremacy, which Sanger herself deplored, yet she still saw birth control as a ‘civilising force’ (Cleghorn 2019, Planned Parenthood 100).

What puzzles me about Sanger is her initial socialism and modest background. Yet, by 1920, she attributed working-class poverty to their own actions, engaging in victim-blaming. She suggested that unemployment, strike-breakers, and police violence against strikers were the faults of the working class and their inability to control reproduction (Bacchi 1988).

Britain had its own controversial figure in Marie Stopes, a contemporary of Margaret Sanger, whom she befriended during Sanger’s exile in England. In Britain, ideas of eugenics, class hierarchy, and racial superiority were deeply entrenched in public discourse, and Stopes was no exception. She was an active member of the Eugenics Education Society and a staunch Darwinist. Like Sanger, Stopes championed birth control, establishing the Mothers’ Clinic in Holloway, London. The clinic, staffed by midwives and visiting doctors, provided birth control advice and contraception, including Stopes’ patented diaphragm (Cleghorn 2019).

Stopes is often hailed as a pioneer of sex positivity. Drawing from her personal experience of an unconsummated marriage, which led to an annulment, she published ‘Married Love’  in 1918. The book sought to educate women—primarily from the middle and upper classes—on how to have fulfilling and healthy sex lives within marriage (Cleghorn 2019). At the time, this was revolutionary, challenging restrictive Victorian ideals of femininity and advocating for women’s sexual pleasure. Stopes even addressed foreplay, criticising Victorian values for fostering frigidity in women, which she believed drove men to seek sex from impoverished prostitutes(Cleghorn 2019, Bacchi 1988). Stopes and Sanger alike condemned prostitution, viewing it as both a symptom of poverty and a moral failing. Stopes further argued that healthy marital sex could prevent men from contracting sexually transmitted infections and bringing them home, thus protecting their families and ensuring that bourgeois children were not born into sickness (Cleghorn 2019, Bacchi 1988). Stopes could arguably be considered a precursor to today’s sex positivity movement. However, her contributions are deeply tainted by classist and racist frameworks. Her advocacy for sexual health and relationships was tailored to the sensibilities of the middle and upper classes, whom she regarded as spiritually and physically superior. Stopes, like many of her contemporaries, viewed the bodies of working-class women as less valuable, reflecting the pervasive elitism of her time (Cleghorn 2019, Bacchi 1988).

While ‘Married Love‘did not explicitly reference eugenics, by 1920, Stopes had openly embraced eugenics in her subsequent work, ‘Radiant Motherhood‘. Eugenics gained prominence in scientific circles after World War I, and while Sanger primarily focused on reducing hereditary diseases, Stopes was more explicit in linking eugenics to her classist and racist ideals. Her contraceptive diaphragm, for example, was pointedly named the “Pro-Race Cap” (Cleghorn 2019, Bacchi 1988).

In contrast, Sanger collaborated with civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois to open a clinic in Harlem. Du Bois believed that access to contraception would empower Black women, improving their economic opportunities and fostering “Black excellence”(Cleghorn 2019). However, Sanger’s language in the Birth Control Review often perpetuated harmful narratives, framing high fertility rates among Black women as a cause of poverty, rather than a result of systemic inequities (Cleghorn 2019). By the 1930s, Sanger advocated before Congress for immigration restrictions to prevent the so-called “feeble-minded” from spreading hereditary diseases. She also recommended sterilization and segregation as measures to protect the nation’s integrity (Cleghorn 2019). While Sanger distanced herself from the Nazi regime and its eugenic policies, Stopes fully embraced them, attending a Nazi Population Science Congress in 1935 and openly supporting their ideology (Cleghorn 2019).

While Stopes and Sanger were key drivers in the bodily autonomy and reproductive health movement, advocating for sex positivity and enjoyable experiences for women, their work was divisive, set within class and race lines. Both women promoted legislation to prevent the ‘unfit’ from reproducing without challenging the system at its core. They were white and privileged, using state powers to challenge the traditional while maintaining a reformist rather than revolutionary approach.

They viewed immigrant, ethnic, and working-class women from patronising, racist, and classist angles. Stopes, more than Sanger, held these views due to Britain’s imperial pride, while Sanger’s initial flirtation with socialism may have tempered her more extreme views.  However her views that were both ableist and racist came to even greater scrutiny in 2020, with her name eventually being removed “from its Manhattan health clinic because of her “harmful connections to the eugenics movement” (Stewart 2020)

In conclusion, neither Sanger nor Stopes supported abortion; their advocacy leaned more toward moderate control than full liberation. Both advocated for selective breeding as a method to “enhance” the nation, and their work was firmly entrenched in eugenic ideologies—an aspect that cannot be overlooked. As Eleanor Cleghorn insightfully noted in her interview with Women’s Fightback, an organisation I am proud to be part of, while these women contributed to the foundational understanding of bodily autonomy, their legacies highlight the necessity of transcending individual accomplishments. It is crucial to acknowledge the broader movement, which must expand beyond the narrow confines of white, upper, and middle-class viewpoints (Women’s Fightback Issue 30)

Depo Provera- contraception and eugenics in the UK context

Many people are aware of the forced sterilisation of Black women in the USA, a practice that persisted well into the 20th century. Figures like Clarence Gamble and Margaret Sanger viewed contraception as a tool to reduce “undesirable” elements of society. However, Preeti Dhillon’s book, ‘The Shoulders We Stand On’, reveals similarly disturbing practices in the UK—something I was previously unaware of and deeply ashamed not to have known.

In 1976, Britain introduced the drug Depo-Provera, a widely used injectable contraceptive. However, it was disproportionately administered to women of colour, often without their knowledge or consent. The parallels with Puerto Rican women’s accounts during the Enovid trials are chilling yet unsurprising. One particularly egregious case involved a 14-year-old girl of Caribbean descent who, while hospitalized for a tonsillectomy, was unknowingly injected with Depo-Provera. Many women who were injected with this drug, had also limited English capabilities, therefore idea of consent being given by these women had been rebuffed as an utter nonsense (Dhillon 2023, Lambert 2019).

Depo-Provera differs significantly from other forms of contraception like the pill or IUDs. While the latter options are more visible and grant women some level of control, Depo-Provera places the power entirely in the hands of healthcare providers. The injection, administered every three months, leaves women reliant on doctors to maintain or discontinue its use—an arrangement that underscores a troubling imbalance of control over their reproductive health. In 1978, study carried at the London Hospital in Mile End and Whitechapel discovered the disparity of how many women of Asian descend received this drug, despite being 20% of women who gave birth at the hospital (Lambert 2019).

According to Dhillon, statistics show that between 30% and 60% of Brown women were subjected to this form of contraception. In some cases, women were misled into believing they were being vaccinated against rubella while simultaneously being injected with Depo-Provera (Dhillon 2023, Lambert 2019).

White working-class women and girls were not spared either. Dhillon highlights the case of Dr. Wilson in Glasgow, who devised a “point system” to determine who should receive the injection. Her criteria included factors like substandard housing conditions or low IQ scores—criteria heavily laden with classist and ableist preconceptions, thus probably used interchangeably (Dhillon 2023).

These practices occurred against a backdrop of heightened racial tension in the 1970s. The era saw growing resentment among the white British population toward postwar immigration from Commonwealth countries—a migration encouraged by the British government to address lab or shortages during postwar reconstruction. This animosity was stoked by far-right groups like the National Front, which incited hatred and violence, and even by the political establishment. Margaret Thatcher’s infamous 1978 remark—“People are really rather afraid that this country might be swamped by people of a different culture”—reflected the prevailing sentiment among British elites.  Even Scretary of State for Social Services Keith Joseph stating the need to ‘balance of our population, our human stock… a high and rising proportion of children are being born to mothers least fitted to bring children to the world’(Dhillon 2023, Lambert 2019).

From the top down, there were efforts to curtail the number of people of colour living in the UK, and reproductive control became one insidious method of achieving that aim. Fortunately, this injustice did not go unchallenged. Black women’s organizations, recognising the silence or apathy of white, middle-class feminist groups, took up the fight against these eugenic practices. Groups like the Brixton Black Women’s Group, formed in 1973, and the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) worked tirelessly to expose the unethical administration of Depo-Provera. Through newsletters like Speak Out, they raised awareness about the drug’s effects on Black women and initiated crucial conversations about the broader reproductive discrimination faced by women of colour—issues often ignored by mainstream feminist movements (Dhillon 2023, Lambert 2019).

The Campaign Against Depo-Provera (CADP) further highlighted the inadequacies of animal testing for the drug and its lack of guaranteed safety. They distributed leaflets, posters, and newsletters, one of which boldly proclaimed: “GERMAN MEASLES INJECTION—YES: DEPO-PROVERA INJECTION—NO.” CADP even produced a comprehensive 48-page report outlining Depo-Provera’s side effects and its continued safety concerns, amplifying their call for accountability (Dhillon 2023, Lambert 2019).

These relentless efforts culminated in the successful “Ban the Jab” campaign, which pressured MPs like Ken Clarke to impose strict regulations on Depo-Provera in 1984. Key provisions included ensuring informed consent, marking a significant victory for reproductive justice led by Black women’s activism. Although Clarke denied succumbing to pressure from these groups, evidence suggests otherwise. An article published in the renowned medical journal The Lancet revealed that Upjohn, the manufacturer of Depo-Provera, attributed Clarke’s decision to what they described as his “surrender to pressure groups” Lambert 2019).

Concluding thoughts

I want to conclude this post by acknowledging that the discourse around reproductive rights is far more nuanced than what I once understood through the lens of mainstream, white, middle-class feminism. The reality is infinitely more complex. Within our current system, which privileges certain groups, reproductive rights have been weaponised to justify harmful practices—such as sterilising women deemed “unfit” to parent due to their economic or social status. This makes it crucial to incorporate class into these discussions. Women of colour, disproportionately part of the working class, often find their race compounding the systems of power that allow medical establishments to act on racist and classist ideologies. These systems perpetuate white supremacy and reinforce a hierarchy of “desirable” social classes.

As a white working-class woman, I’ve been reflecting on my own evolving perspective. For many years, I believed that economically disadvantaged people shouldn’t have children—a belief rooted in my experiences of growing up in poverty. I internalised shame and self-hatred, convinced that my social class made me lesser than my more privileged peers.

Now, at 25, I see how this perception was shaped by a system designed to make people like me feel inadequate. I spent years blaming myself for inadequacies, rather than recognising that the system is designed to perpetuate inequality and neglect. I’m not suggesting that raising children while struggling financially is easy, but I no longer see it as an individual failure. Instead, it’s a systemic failure—a system so inhumane that it convinces us we’re unworthy of having families simply because we don’t meet its arbitrary standards of income or stability.

Instead of addressing poverty at its root, the system weaponises reproductive rights to restrict the growth of groups it deems undesirable, rather than creating conditions where having children doesn’t bring immense financial strain. I also challenge the assumption that being white and wealthy automatically makes someone a good parent. Wealth can often hide dysfunction and abuse. Social services rarely question wealthy families, as we’ve seen in cases like Asunta Basterra or the Menendez brothers, where clear red flags were ignored. On the other hand, children from disadvantaged families—like Sara Sharif—are subjected to a system that fails them in different, yet equally tragic ways.

And isn’t it the state’s responsibility to create conditions where raising children is feasible? If the state denies us that, then why even bother with a state at all? If we owe society our allegiance but it owes us nothing in return, why maintain borders and structures that only uphold inequality? That may sound radical, but I’m simply applying neoliberal logic to its inevitable conclusion.

Had I been born in the 1970s, I might have been subjected to forced contraception too. However its thanks to grassroots movements like the Brixton Black Women’s Group and OWAAD (Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent) that we are even having these conversations today. These groups confronted the ways white middle-class feminism often upheld classism and racism, especially in healthcare and reproductive rights. Their work underscores the importance of challenging not just policies but the foundational ideologies behind them.

For true liberation, we must confront these uncomfortable truths, examine our biases, and organise to dismantle the system at its core. We need more than reform—we need revolution. Sometimes, the foundation itself must be uprooted, the soil scorched and rejuvenated, for something better to grow. I suppose that’s my New Year’s wish: to see the seeds of something transformative begin to take root.

Dominika Szarek

Hi, I’m Dominika, the sole author of this article. I created this space to connect my ideas and express my political and social commentary in the vast digital void. Here, my consciousness speaks through.