My name is
aunjanue ellis.
In the majority opinion of Dobbs v., justices stated, “the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions.”
This nation’s history and traditions are in fact deeply rooted in enslavement, exploitation and violence against Black people particularly Black women. Therefore American “history and tradition” should never be our guide be but our keen point of departure, our skidding exit in all that we do regarding Black women’s health and wellness.
My Story
In “American history and tradition,” Black women’s bodies have been used as practice sites for the science of eugenics.
In “American history and tradition,” J Marion Sims, the “father of gynecology” experimented on Black enslaved women.
In “American history and tradition,” Fannie Lou Hamer was sterilized against in her will.
In “American history and tradition,” Black women are deemed no better than lab rats, cadavers, and frogs.
In “American history and tradition,” Black women were used as breeding factories to produce more enslaved people. When Black women were raped by slave owners, the children that resulted from those pregnancies, by law, would become slaves. States like Mississippi where Black women are disproportionately living in poverty are largely where absolute abortion bans are now in place. Mississippi, for example, is also the state where Black women were enslaved in greater numbers and suffered the most racial violence. This is no coincidence. There is a direct line from the enslavement of Black women to the Dobbs decision.
In other words, a Black woman’s body has never been her own in the history and traditions of this country. They have always been “labor” whether as workers in cotton fields themselves or as breeding factories to produce even more enslaved labor in those fields.
So lets be clear.
Reproductive autonomy is a civil rights issue. This is a freedom fight. No matter where you stand on the morality of abortion rights, what should be unshakable is the fundamental agreement that Black women are not subhuman. That their bodies are their own and are neither products of the state or a contemporary plantation economy that continues the enslavement tradition of forced pregnancy.
My name is aunjanue ellis. When I was twenty four yrs old, I had an abortion. I did it for my family. I did it for my future. I have no regrets. I would do it again. I have family members and friends who have had abortions. The loss of this right continues a history and tradition that relegates Black women as bystanders, spectators in the fates of their own bodies.
The idea for the billboard came as a response to the public campaigns waged against women on the sides of highways and streets all across the country. Billboards with messages like “Abortion breaks the heart of Jesus.” This is blatant intimidation. Period. Religion as artillery. There exists very little counter to the intimidation. And so here’s mine. I take this space. I reclaim as it as a site to tell the women of this country that they are honored here and most significantly they are not alone. That their reproductive planning should be between them and their families, their doctors and if they serve one, their god. This is a space without shame, a space of “mind your business, not my body.”
#Imthebossofmybody
- me