Black women leaders unite for abortion rights

By Kevin Deutsch

On August 15, 2023

A panel of Black female leaders spoke up for bodily autonomy and the right to choose at Florida Memorial University Saturday, telling a crowd of around 120 Black women that they must fight to enshrine abortion access in Florida’s constitution. 

Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority’s Gamma Zeta Omega Chapter hosted U.S. Rep. Frederica S. Wilson’s “Pumps, Pearls and Politics” event featuring Democratic Florida House Reps. Ashley Gantt and Dotie Joseph, who represent parts of Miami-Dade County; Democratic Florida House Rep. Marie Woodson, who represents southern Broward County; Daneila Mcvea-Smith, Planned Parenthood program director for south, east and north Florida; and moderator Dr. Todra Anderson-Rhodes, chief medical officer for Memorial Hospital Miramar. 

The message of the group during Saturday’s panel, titled “A Pro-Active Conversation About Women’s Choice,” was clear: Florida’s curtailing of abortion rights following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last year has disproportionately impacted Black women and dramatically increased risks to their health. 

Their answer to the attack on reproductive rights: get enough signatures to place an amendment on the 2024 ballot enshrining abortion access in Florida’s constitution. To those working to curtail abortion rights in the state, and who hope to see the petition fail, Wilson delivered a forceful message. 

“You can’t stop us, you can’t break us, you cannot take our soul,” said the Democratic representative, whose district includes parts of Miami-Dade County and southern Broward County. “We will be here to fight you until we don’t have any breath in our body, because we’re going to put this on the ballot and we are going to win.” 

Anderson-Rhodes, an OB-GYN and the first Black female chief medical officer in the Memorial Healthcare System, said the stakes for Florida’s Black women in the fight for reproductive rights could not be higher. 

“People have been turned away who look like us from getting the services that they need,” Anderson-Rhodes said. “We need to take care of ourselves and each other and understand this is a major health risk, to be Black and pregnant in America.” 

In the District of Columbia and 29 states that reported racial and ethnic data on abortion to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 39% of women who had abortions in 2020 were non-Hispanic Black, according to the Pew Research Center. 

“That’s us,” Anderson-Rhodes told the women in the crowd, most of them decked out in pumps and pearls meant to symbolize wisdom. “We need to preserve our rights.” 

The attack on reproductive freedoms is part of a larger assault on the rights of Black people being carried out by the mostly white, mostly male Florida Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis, panelists said. 

Gantt, a lawyer, former teacher and political newcomer, ousted incumbent James Bush III last year after he became the only Democrat in the Legislature to vote for Florida’s 15-week abortion ban and the Parental Rights in Education bill, known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. 

Formerly, Florida was a “safe haven” for women from Southern U.S. states with more restrictive abortion policies, Gantt said. That ended last year, when Florida implemented a 15-week ban on most abortions, the result of a law passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature. In April, Florida enacted a six-week abortion ban that is contingent on the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling in a challenge to the 15-week ban, scheduled to be heard in September. 

“Where does it stop when we talk about the government telling us what we can do with our body?” asked Gantt, reminding the audience at the historically Black university that Black women were once routine subjects of medical experimentation. “It was believed that we didn’t experience pain the same, so they didn’t have any anesthesia when all of this research and these surgeries were being done. 

“This legislation is not haphazardly done. It’s always very intentional.” 

Mcvea-Smith said Florida is moving “closer and closer” to the days of “back-alley abortions.” 

“I’m a Black woman in America,” she said. “My ancestors went through a time where there wasn’t body autonomy, where their bodies weren’t their own.”

Joseph hit back at state politicians curtailing abortion rights, “who are playing games literally with people’s lives, manipulating us in our communities to fall into what they are trying to attain.” 

“When they are talking about the history of slavery [and Black bodily autonomy], what’s going on now is, I would posit, a bunch of mediocre, middle school-brained and emotionally aged white men who … want to control white women’s bodies and don’t care who they hurt in the aftermath,” Joseph said. 

Woodson urged the audience to advocate for and sign the petition for a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights. Under state law, the petition effort needs the valid signatures of at least 891,523 registered voters by Feb. 1, 2024, to get the amendment on the ballot. The completed petition must also clear procedural hurdles with Republican state Attorney General Ashley Moody and Florida’s Supreme Court. 

If the amendment gets on the ballot and 60% of Floridians vote in favor, the state constitution would be amended. 

“I have a 23-year-old daughter … guess what? She does not have the same rights that I had,” Woodson said. 

The state representative added that men, a handful of who attended the event, should also sign the petition and get involved. 

“Everything is on the line right now,” she said. 

During the event, Wilson shared a moving story with the audience of her losing an unborn, 7-month baby boy when she was a young teacher. The death, which happened before the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade recognizing a woman’s right to an abortion, left Wilson shattered. 

“I had to walk around with a dead baby in my womb for two months … every day I cried all day. … I was sick, I couldn’t eat,” Wilson said. “The flesh was going into my bloodstream and I was going to die. You know what the doctor said to me? ‘We cannot induce labor. That is a crime. We will go to jail … so you have got to carry this baby.’ 

“You know what, we’re back to those days, people. That’s what Florida did for you. That’s why we’re having this forum today. I want you to be knowledgeable … because you’re back where I was.” 

Wilson urged members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority’s Gamma Zeta Omega Chapter to become a potent force for advocacy. Members of the historically Black sorority seemed ready to heed her call. 

“We really want people to take away from this event a sense of advocacy,” said Dawn Mangham, a Miami resident who chairs the chapter’s Connection and Social Action Committee, which hosted the event. “We want them to take a sense of being able to affect change back to the community.”

This piece was republished from The Miami News.