WOMEN’S HEALTH
How this country understands birth, personhood and privacy — why its laws even presume to dictate what happens during an individual pregnancy — is deeply rooted in slavery. A couple of hundred years ago, the reproductive health of enslaved Black people literally decided the state of this country’s economy: More Black women able to bear more Black children meant that the plantation economy could prosper. But of course, the system of slavery — and the doctrine of anti-Blackness that sprang up to philosophically justify it — was predicated on inhumane physical, sexual and emotional violence. This entanglement of incentives left a cruel legacy that continues in today’s shocking racial health disparities.
–Kaitlyn Greenidge, reviewing Linda Villarosa’s Under The Skin for the New York Times Book Review
another eye opens 