Reproductive Rights Will Play Major Role in 2012 Election

In a blog entry at ColorLines, Akiba Solomon writes that pro-choice advocates should prepare to battle for reproductive rights for women of color in the coming year. She says that given assaults lobbed by anti-choice advocates, the issue is sure to play a pivotal role in the 2012 presidential election.

I’m not a psychic, cable news pundit or even a Sunday morning talk show guest. But based on how key race and gender matters played out in 2011, and the looming presidential election, I think 2012 is going to be a year of battles royale for basic reproductive health rights that many of us take for granted.

And trust, women of color are a major piece of the anti-choice agenda. Look no further than the scores of  insulting, race-baiting danger womb billboards targeting black and Latina women that went up in cities including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Those boards—which send black and brown women to religiously based crisis pregnancy centers that don’t offer full reproductive healthcare services or even basic prenatal care—made it clear that women are just collateral damage in this war.

Like rape and domestic violence, reproductive healthcare doesn’t seem to strike the same chord with us as say, a stupid Gene Marks column or Satoshi Kanazawa calling us ugly, but these issues have to be on our immediate radar. I’m not saying we’re asleep—as Erykah Badu says (and I too often cite and paraphrase), we stay woke. The question is how we can effectively clap back when so many of us are living hand to mouth; fearing ICE-enhanced racial profiling or the regular old version of race-based criminalization; battling home foreclosure; navigating higher ed debt; and regrouping after political debacles. (Plan B blocking, anyone?)

Read Akiba Solomon’s entire blog entry at ColorLines.