This three-part interview series intends to shine a light on some of the ways government systems and other power structures are weaponized against reproductive justice and bodily autonomy. In this first interview, we focused on abortion as we spoke with Renee Bracey Sherman, founder of We Testify and co-author of “Liberating Abortion: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve.”
An Interview with Renee Bracey Sherman
Diane: Hi Renee, thank you for being here. We are seeing attacks on many of our rights – abortion, contraception, and sex education, just to name a few. Can you talk about the current landscape of reproductive rights in this country?
Renee: For anyone who’s reading this, what you’re seeing, you’re not imagining it. It is all real, it is all connected, and it’s supposed to feel overwhelming because it is attacking all of us at the same time from all angles. That’s the entire point, in hopes that we’ll just give up. I’m hearing folks say, “this is unprecedented.” And there are parts of it that are, but there is a lot of it that’s not. Actually, it is a lot of the same things that they’ve been doing for hundreds of years.
This is happening at the same time as we’re continuing to bomb people all around the world. We are separating families, as we did during the first Trump Administration and Obama and Biden’s administrations, but now we’ve escalated to snatching people up off the street. I think that this is a larger attack on our feeling of safety and bodily autonomy. If you do not feel safe walking down the street, and you do not feel safe to be able to raise your family, you’re not going to feel safe to have children. To also potentially see that child get murdered by police or ripped from you by ICE. That in and of itself is a terrifying violation of bodily autonomy because you never feel safe enough to feel ownership of your future.
Diane: That makes sense. There is a connection between our sense of safety and our ability to have bodily autonomy and agency in our decisions.
Renee: I think it’s also tied to eugenics. For example, the Sydney Sweeney jeans Ad that’s in the news where they’re talking about “genes” and what are “good genes.” Well, part of the eugenics movement was this idea of having the right types of families and the right children. It was very anti-disabled, anti-Black, anti-brown, anti-immigrant because they wanted to be able to have a country that was focused on white people and white people’s lives.
People concerned with perpetuating white supremacy have this idea of, “who is the right type of person to be here, who is the right type of person to be an American.” When you want to control a group of people being able to do a thing or not, you limit their access. Prior to 1973, they focused on limiting the rights and the reproductive autonomies of Black and brown and indigenous people through forced sterilization, reservations, poverty, and lack of rights.
Diane: I saw the Sydney Sweeney Ad caused a lot of online discourse about whiteness and who is encouraged to reproduce in the U.S. Has criminalizing abortion been a tactic used to encourage white women to have children?
Renee: Yes, historically, they needed to make sure that white women produced children, and in particular, the right children, AKA white children. They started outlawing abortion, criminalizing the people who are providing abortions, and criminalizing access to what was contraceptive pills, or abortion pills, at the time.
And this is consistent with the way that Americans always deny access to things, through criminalization. We know no other way. We solve everything that we don’t want people to have access to by putting people in jail, threatening them with criminalization. Rather than arresting the white women, who were using these services, they would arrest those who provided them.
Diane: Speaking of the criminalization of Black providers, you have written of this alongside attempts to delegitimize midwifery, and the contraction of health services to primarily white male physicians with the introduction of the American Medical Association (AMA).
Renee: From our research in “Liberating Abortion: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve,” prior to the American Medical Association, Black midwives and abortion providers were holding the sphere of maternal health, really any pregnancy-related care. White men wanted to be able to control that area of medical care in which they had no domain. The way they convinced society that abortion was bad, and not to go to midwives, particularly these Black and brown midwives, was to say that they were quacks. They provided abortions, they were unlicensed, they were uncredentialed. And, of course, they couldn’t get the credentials, because at the time the only people who could go to medical schools were white men. There were a few medical schools for Black men, but the American Medical Association refused to credential them because they were Black. They created this artificial idea that a doctor is white, and a doctor is best. And doctors, good doctors, don’t provide abortions. And anyone else is subject to criminalization.
Diane: That explains how access can be controlled by limiting providers to a small, credentialed group and criminalizing those providing care outside of narrow parameters. You mentioned that we’ve seen this historically. What are we seeing now?
Renee: I think what we’re seeing now is a cycle of history. This idea that abortion is now criminalized, and the state is looking to criminalize any sort of provider that they can get their hands on. But what is different from before is this clear willingness and documented way in which they are criminalizing people who have abortions and self-manage their abortions. In this moment, people need to understand the scary level of surveillance that we have now that we did not have then.
People think a text or Facebook message to a friend is private, not realizing that someone else can look at it and take a picture of it. Or that someone can say, “I think that they self-managed their abortion” and Facebook can turn those messages over to police. People show up to the hospital telling medical providers what pills they used. And they’re just trying to get the best health care that they can. They’re looking for someone to help them and those medical providers can then turn over the evidence and tell police what they said. When you look something up on the internet, your search history could be used against you. Whether you actually took action to self-manage an abortion or not, that search becomes something incriminating. It’s very, very scary, and I want people to understand that we’ve been here before in this criminalization cycle, but also things are incredibly worse. The possession of information is what is being used to harm people, to put them in jail. And it’s working; people are in jail.
Diane: It sounds like digital surveillance and data privacy are a big concern then. Are there things folks can do to protect themselves?
Renee: At the end of the day, if the government wants data about you, it’s going to get it. I mean, Kamala Harris was just doing an interview where she was saying that she only uses wired headphones because she was in an intelligence meeting that if you’re using the Bluetooth ones, they can listen into on your conversation. She told us right now the level of surveillance that they have. So, take that seriously. If they really want to prosecute someone, they will. And I think that we just need to make sure that people protect themselves as best as they can. If you’re going to use a period tracking app, use Euki. If you’re searching to figure out where your nearest clinic is, use INeedAnA. In general, people should be using browsers that don’t track their data and regularly clear their browser history. Do not put anything written down that you wouldn’t want read in a court of law and only talk to people about this information that you deeply trust.
Diane: What are some tangible things someone reading this could do to combat criminalization and be supportive of abortion and the people who have them?
Renee: I think everyone should learn about abortion because someone you love might need one. They might ask for your help to find an abortion provider, and you should know, “Oh, yeah, actually, I heard, there’s this website INeedAnA. I can look up the clinic for you. Do you want some help? Oh, I’ve heard of these things called abortion funds and they help pay for abortions. I have some extra money I can give you, and we can call the abortion fund.” There are ways you can just be helpful. We should be spreading information for people to know to protect themselves against criminalization. If police or a medical provider are questioning you about a self-managed abortion, what do you do? You should have the Repro Legal Defense helpline’s number. You should know how to call the Repro Legal Defense Fund if you, or someone you love, get arrested.
There are things that we can just know and have that information. I’ve never been on fire, but if I catch fire, I know exactly what to do: stop, drop, and roll. I’ve known this since I was in preschool. We don’t anticipate being in a fire, but we can know what to do in case. You don’t have to assume that you’re going to need an abortion, but I think it’s important that we all know how. Or know what’s entailed, so that way, we’re actually operating from the same basis of fact.
There’s a myth that people think abortion is a surgery and it’s not. I think this idea that it has to be doctors is incredibly outdated and elitist. We know that granny midwives used to provide this care. We also know that in many states, nurse practitioners, physicians’ assistants, they all can provide this care. We also know from the story of The Janes that it’s possible for anyone to be trained and provide this care. It is a procedure that people can be trained in how to do and is even more accessible with pills. We know that medication abortion is incredibly safe, and people can carefully do it by themselves.
Diane: I love the stop, drop, and roll comparison. Thank you for the reminder that we can grow our skills and capacity to provide care, education, and support to each other. I look forward to speaking with you more for part three of this interview series.
Renee Bracey Sherman is a reproductive justice activist, abortion storyteller, and writer. She founded We Testify, an organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions and share their stories at the intersection of race, class, and gender identity. She is also an executive producer of Ours to Tell, an award-winning documentary elevating the voices of people who’ve had abortions. In 2024, she and her co-author Regina Mahone released their debut book, LIBERATING ABORTION: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve and they are also the co-hosts of The A Files: A Secret History of Abortion, a podcast from The Meteor. She lives in Washington, DC.
Resources
Euki
INeedAnA
Repro Legal Defense Fund – Helpline 844-868-2812
We Testify
LIBERATING ABORTION: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve