​​From its earliest days capitalism has used its state power in the courts and the law to control the working class’ ability to have children. The brutal enforcement of the bosses’ policies and practices on childbirth have been intertwined with their building of a racist society. The latest move to ban abortion is no isolated attack on women. It is an attack on all workers and a warning of more fascist discipline for the working class on the horizon, with Black, Latin and indigenous women disproportionately bearing the brunt of these sexist, racist attacks (see editorial on page 2).
The foundations of a racist U.S.
In the English colonies the colonial ruling class was focused on controlling how the population grew. The first law relating to population control was passed in 1662 in Virginia which enshrined that slavery would be passed onto the children based on the status, enslaved or free, of the mother. This preserved the rulers’ ability to produce enslaved workers through the rape of enslaved Black women. Around the same time, the first laws were passed that banned the marriage of white and Black workers as equals. This forced the creation of separate groups of workers, white workers as indentured servants or wage labor, and enslaved Black workers (Reproductive Justice, UC Press, 2017).
Genocide of the indigenous
While the early U.S. ruling class was using rape and enacting racist laws to increase the size of the enslaved population, they were using legalized genocide to destroy the indigenous population. The colonial and early U.S. governments authorized over 1,500 wars and legal raids against indigenous people. After 100 years of attacks the Indian Removal Act of 1830 further legalized what had already been the practice of the U.S. rulers: forced death marches as the U.S. rulers expanded their country westward. After forcing indigenous workers onto reservations, a new attack was started where the U.S. ruling class began a campaign of forcibly seizing indigenous children from their families and sending them to government-run boarding schools and then to white families. All to increase the amount of white workers in the west and eliminate the indigenous population. All told, the indigenous population, estimated to be between 5 and 15 million in 1492, was nearly wiped out, leaving only 230,000 by the end of the
19th century (history.com).
Racism and population control
After the Civil War the ruling class maintained the separation of white and non-white workers through a series of laws that enforced segregation and population control. Racist laws were enacted that prevented Black and white workers from integrating. Once Black workers were no longer enslaved, the ruling class began a campaign to stop their reproductive growth. They accomplished this by distributing contraception and using forced sterilization on the Black and immigrant working class. The U.S. sterilization laws targeting anyone the government deemed “unfit” were eventually copied by the Nazis to justify their genocidal policies (Hitler’s American Model, James Whitman).
Birth control became another method against reproduction. Margaret Sanger, the founder of the birth control movement that became Planned Parenthood, was a proponent of eugenics, the racist idea that white people were genetically superior to non-white people. Sanger, supported by the ruling class through donations to her birth control clinics, toured the country speaking about the need to limit the number of children among Black and immigrant workers (NPR, 8/14/2015).
Eventually, as the depression of 1929 created armies of unemployed workers and the ruling class feared that the growing communist movement would overthrow U.S. capitalism, birth control campaigns and forced sterilization were expanded to include the poorest groups of white workers as well (Reproductive Justice, UC Press, 2017).
The bosses’ only interest in the working class is as a tool to make profits. Our lives, our wellbeing and our children mean nothing to the ruling class other than making money. To this day their healthcare policies are limited to the minimal necessities to keep enough workers able to go to work to make money for the bosses. The bosses fight and resist anything beyond that. The fight over control of having children is part of this battle between our class and the bosses. They use the laws and the courts to control as much as they can who has children and what happens to our children after they’re born. The working class will only gain control of our lives and our future by smashing the capitalists and their racist system with communist revolution.