Controlling black women’s reproductive health rights: An impetus to black women’s collective organizing

Introduction

There exists a persistent discourse in Brazil since the slavery period that black women are responsible for the rise in criminal behavior because they are the ones who give birth to delinquent children. This widespread belief has caused severe harm to these women’s social status and life conditions because it invites violence against them. Furthermore, this reveals a biological deterministic point of view strongly present in Brazilian society that indicates that black children, especially males, are criminals from birth. An analysis of interrelated beliefs and socioeconomic circumstances can shed light on the kinds of structural racial violence that Brazilian culture and society have imposed on black women’s reproductive freedom. This essay provides an account of the continuing historical-structural and everyday processes confronted by these women individually and collectively. Subsequently, I analyze how the process of controlling black women’s reproductive health rights by the Brazilian state played a major role in the emergence of the black women’s movement and organizations such as NGOs. ¹

Oftentimes, the Brazilian media reproduces information that labels black women and families as the root cause of the country’s violence, poverty, underdevelopment, disease epidemics, among other socioeconomic problems. This gendered racial discourse with regard to black women explicitly suggests that the government should create programs and policies to prevent poor women from having too many children. The images that appear in the media represent black women and families as in need of state control through public health policies and programs such as sterilization and birth control that primarily target the black population.

As I will discuss in the article, such representation is a legacy from the Brazilian colonial past of containing black women’s reproductive choices and rights, legitimized by the idea that they were problems for the progress and improvement of the nation, more specifically for the ‘Brazilian race’. Although I understand that the controlling of black female reproduction has occurred in Brazil since the slavery period, I focus on the 1960s to 1980s for two reasons: (a) it was during this historical moment that state pressure on women, non-whites, and the poor intensified as the major target of demographic boom strategies and policies in response to global pressures, (b) the foundations for the emergence of the contemporary black women’s movement were cemented with all its diverse segments, although still deeply influenced by earlier political engagements and struggles.

In order to outline this political history of the black women’s movement in relationship to the state’s attempt to transform the Brazilian population by influencing reproductive rights, I will provide a brief history of the period of 1960s to the 1980s. This is the period of the establishment of reproductive health policies in Brazil, which involved interconnected phenomena such as a dramatic decline in the Brazilian population, massive female sterilization practices, the emergence of family planning, and a series of parallel policies and actions concerning reproduction related to women’s health in the country and abroad. The second and third parts of the essay will draw upon this regulatory process of black women’s reproductive health—a case of violence, injustice, and discrimination—as a crucial moment that fostered the rise of modern black women’s organizations.

The context for the emergency of the controlling practices of black women’s reproductive health and rights in Brazil

In order to understand the circumstances surrounding the regulatory policies of black female reproductive health, I need to revisit the history of the establishment of family planning policies and other interrelated state actions in reproductive health in Brazil. ² There were three significant phases of this history, which will now be discussed in greater detail.

The first period of the history of formal family planning initiatives in Brazil began in the 19th century and lasted until 1964, i.e. it began during the colonial period, continuing through the Imperial regime until the commencement of the era of the Republic. This moment was characterized by two discourses: a pro-birth diffusion position (pró-natalismo difuso) and a eugenics racial discourse that emphasized the need to improve the ‘Brazilian race’ (see Costa, 1996; Roland, 1999; Sobrinho, 1993). Sobrinho argues that

. . . under the Pro-Birth agenda it was possible to identify the marks of 19th century’s medical hygienic ideas, racist eugenics, Comte’s Positivism, and ‘instrumental authoritarianism’; and in the Brazilian context all these ideologies were influenced by the idea that the country’s evolution was implicated in the enhancement of the population in terms of ‘quality’ and quantity. (Sobrinho, 1993: 79; my tr.)

Edna Roland (1999), a well-known black feminist and a former member of the Geledés NGO, argued that the eugenics movement played a major role in key political issues such as social legislation regarding children’s and maternal health, family, control of infectious diseases, immigration laws, and proposals created to give the state the power to regulate marriage relations. These measures were justified as a way of improving the ‘race’ and solving the ‘national issue’. The eugenicists believed that the extensive process of miscegenation that was happening in the country would result in the whitening of the Brazilian population because of the ‘natural superiority’ of white people. This kind of thought in this first period did not result in a clear pro-birth policy (política Pró-Natalista). However, this discourse about the improvement of the ‘race’ can be considered as the first key aspect that created the conditions to justify regulatory policies regarding reproductive health, especially in the case of black women.

From the 1960s to the 1970s, while Brazil was experiencing internal changes, the Malthusian thesis ³ reemerged internationally, warning of the risks of the disproportionate relationship between the supposed ‘excessive’ growth of the human population and the escalation of food production. Changes in the socioeconomic and political development of the country informed the second key aspect of the development of reproductive health policies designed to regulate women’s reproductive health in the country. However, instead of the regulation being based on a pro-birth tendency, it was sustained by a focus on birth control as a way of reducing the Brazilian population. According to Ana Costa (1996), as a result of the concerns that arose from the Malthusian argument, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) was created in London in 1952, and was financially supported by several countries that wanted the establishment of family planning programs and envisioned a form of demographic control that would result in increased restrictions on the freedom of women and couples to procreate. Thus, the International Planned Parenthood Federation was established in Brazil in the 1970s, and provided financial support to institutions and organizations that offered family planning programs to the general population (Costa, 1996). The second period of the history of family planning in Brazil occurred from 1964 to 1974. It was characterized by the antagonism between the anti-birth position (posição antinatalista) and the staunch anti-birth control position (posição anticontrolista). The anti-birth cluster was composed of the Superior War School (Escola Superior de Guerra) which considered population growth a threat to national security, business leaders who considered the growth an obstacle to national development, a group of doctors interested in the implementation of family planning services in the country, and the United States government that justified its population control intervention arguing that Brazilian northeast region was at risk of becoming influenced by Cuba’s political regime ⁴ (Sobrinho, 1993: 80).

Organizing against the anti-birth group, the anti-birth control alliance was comprised of the Catholic Church which did not support the use of contraceptive methods, leftists who considered the anti-birth discourse a symbol of anti-nationalism, imperialism, and capitalism, and some of the Army’s conservative sectors which defended the expansion of the population as a way to occupy the unpopulated regions of the country, again in the name of ‘national security’ (Sobrinho, 1993: 80).

Edna Roland (1999) pointed out that the controversies raised by the anti-birth position versus anti-birth control position emerged in 1964 when the United States began to argue that Brazilian development would only be possible with a decrease in the growth of its population. Costa (1996) argued that, in this period, the United States was implementing a policy of economic aid to Latin American countries with the requirement that countries receiving aid would have to adopt programs and strategies designed to reduce their populations. It was as a result of the global economic, political, and demographic shifts in 1964 that new approaches to population control emerged in Brazil. These approaches would be translated into attempts to regulate reproductive health matters through the practice of sterilization and family planning policies. Thus, the demographic terrain of Brazil changed radically from 1964 to 1974 as the country underwent a huge decline in fertility levels (Sobrinho, 1993).

The following year, 1965, was a significant year for the history of reproductive health regulation, because globally this was the period when international support for birth control strategies was intensified. Moved by ‘alarm’ at the world population growth in non-western countries, the United States decided to heavily invest in a series of strategies, such as mobilizing public funds to support birth control actions in regions of the globe they considered to be at imminent risk of a ‘demographic boom’, and also to persuade governments to take action and adopt the policy recommendations of ‘developed’ nations. At the beginning of 1965, the UN Secretary-General created a technical working group to focus specifically on the subject of restraining population expansion. In July of that year, the UN Social and Economic Council endorsed a large program organized by the UN Population Commission whose activities were designed to intensify family planning policies throughout the so-called ‘Third World’ (Sobrinho, 1993). In September, the World Conference on Population took place in Belgrade and the main discussion and decisions involved efforts to prevent the demographic boom in the southern hemisphere, which was considered a high priority by public and private organizations (Sobrinho, 1993: 93).

Fonseca Sobrinho (1993: 93) indicates that population control was presented as an effort to combat diseases. Hence, in 1965, the changes endorsed by the United States fostered the establishment of various global agencies and organizations devoted primarily to supporting population control as well as academic research and the distribution of contraceptive medicines. Efforts to provide financial support for these activities were led by the government agency USAID, ⁵ but other social institutions also contributed to this endeavor, including other European nations, private donors such as the Rockefeller Foundation, intergovernmental agencies such as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), ⁶ and non-governmental international agencies, the most important of which was the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). ⁷ IPPF sponsored the activities of organizations such as the Family Well-Being Civil Society (BEMFAM) in Brazil founded in 1965 (Sobrinho, 1993: 95–6). ⁸

Many Brazilians, especially women, would confuse BEMFAM with a regular public healthcare service provided by the federal government. And to many of them this organization functioned as an alternative to the chaotic public health services offered in the country. The main goal of BEMFAM was to encourage the creation of a government family planning program throughout the country (Sobrinho 1993: 105). Its operations were considered crucial to national and international efforts to reduce the rates of fertility in the country, and it immediately drew reactions from diverse sectors of the general public, especially the black and feminist movements, principally black women activists. Even the Brazilian government became suspicious of BEMFAM’s activities. In 1967, the newspaper Última Hora stated that BEMFAM was behind the massive sterilization of women in Amazônia performed by North American missionaries based in the Evangelical Church of Brazil. ⁹ This organization promoted the creation of a government family planning program, mainly in so-called Third World’s countries.

Such claims generated a national debate regarding the issue of sterilization, and general matters concerning birth control in the country. A Parliamentary Inquiry Commission was created to investigate the accusations and following this initial denunciation, many others came forward. The Inquiry Commission heard from 25 people, held 31 meetings, and collected hundreds of documents regarding the issue of sterilization. However, the Inquiry Commission was not able to deliver a verdict (Sobrinho, 1993: 109). A final critical issue identified by Sobrinho (1993) is the parallel history of the emergence of family planning program in Brazil. According to the author, before and during the time that BEMFAM was performing its activities mainly in urban areas, a North American nurse, theologian, and Seventh-day Adventist Church priest named Leslie Charles Scofield Jr. and his wife were also working in the country’s rural and semi-urban regions. Their mission was to provide medical and religious assistance to the population of Vale do Rio São Francisco, in the north of Minas Gerais (Sobrinho, 1993: 115). In 1968, Scofield organized a family planning program with a professor named Joseph Beasley that could be implemented throughout Brazil and other countries of Latin American, Asia and Africa. The program was officially organized in Brazil in 1970 and many important institutions participated in its inauguration such as the Ministry of Health, the Health Secretariat of the State of Minas Gerais, USAID, and the College of Medicine of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, among others. Although this program produced a lot of material, documents, projects, and plans, and mobilized a team of more than 30 people, including technicians from United States, it only operated for two years and then closed. Joseph Beasley was later arrested in the United States, accused of illegally using funds he obtained from the project.

The intense political debates in this period took place from 1974 to 1983. According to Sobrinho (1993), this phase gave birth to new discourses that shaped the implementation of family planning as an official policy. Many factors contributed to the development of this new stage. The Catholic Church accepted the idea of ‘procreation’ as a dimension detached from the main role of sexual life, and even declared it was in favor of ‘natural contraceptive methods’. The Superior School of War contested and triumphed over the geopolitical theory ¹⁰ of the nationalist military. In opposition to their ideas, the Superior School of War argued that the ‘demographic boom’ and the ‘internal threat’ that it represented were far more important than the ‘external threats’ of foreign family planning practices. Furthermore, BEMFAM’s family planning discourse and practices were also overshadowed by the new organization, CPAIMC, –Centro de Pesquisas de Assistência Integrada à Mulher e à Criança (Research Center for Integrated Assistance for Woman and Child), that was established in 1974. This new center for family planning received funding from the private business sector and disseminated maternal and child health information and services to women in Rio de Janeiro. CPAIMC claimed to focus on women’s health as its first and highest priority. Fonseca Sobrinho (1993) affirms that the women’s movement participated in the debates regarding this project since its founding. At first, as part of the ‘Conventional Leftist Party’, women activists started to demand the right to exercise what they called the ‘democratic control of reproduction’ (Sobrinho, 1993: 135). They criticized CPAIMC for being merely another scheme to control women’s bodies through sterilization and did not consider it the kind of organization that respected women’s reproductive rights.

Although there was this widespread disapproval, more important changes in reproductive control occurred as CPAIMC informed the basis for the Brazilian government formulation and implementation of the Programa de Assistência Integral à Saúde da Mulher – PAISM (Integrated Assistance for Women’s Health Program) (Sobrinho, 1993: 136). The complex process of establishing the PAISM was fraught with controversies and widespread criticism. The government demonstrated through PAISM that it was the responsibility of the state to offer information and contraceptive methods to families (Sobrinho, 1993: 136). Thus, the Ministry of Health created two programs: the Programa de Saúde Materno Infantil (Maternal and Infant Health Program) in 1975 that operated as a family planning service, and later on the Programa Nacional de Paternidade Responsável (Responsible Fatherhood National Program) in 1979 (see Roland, 1999; Sobrinho, 1993).

In 1977, a program to prevent and assist high-risk pregnancies (Programa de Prevenção da Gravidez de Alto Risco, PPGAR) was also created, but it was much criticized by various social movement actors as it was alleged that it served as a birth control program. Ana Costa (1996) argues that the program employed a biased approach and, as a consequence, mainly targeted the poor, blacks, and other populations considered ‘disposable’. In order to implement the PPGAR, the Ministry of Health hired college professors (mostly physicians) who specialized in reproductive health, but the protests against this program led the federal government to terminate its activities.

In 1978, the final year of the President Ernesto Geisel’s administration, he gave his approval to the family planning initiatives, admitting that he considered the ‘demographic boom’ to be a serious problem. In 1979, the new president, João Batista de Oliveira Figueiredo, implemented the Programa Nacional de Paternidade Responsável (National Responsible Fatherhood Program) that was based on a BEMFAM study.

The health minister, Waldyr Arcoverde, announced in 1980 that family planning efforts would not be a special program, but instead that a maternal and infant program would be offered. In addition, these activities were part of a broader public healthcare plan called PREVSAÚDE, Programa de Ações Básicas de Saúde (Program for Basic Actions on Health). Nonetheless, after criticism, the government abandoned this program, as well as the National Responsible Fatherhood program, and brought their activities to an end (Sobrinho, 1993: 158).

The year 1983 represented the end of this third period of the history of family planning in Brazil. Fonseca Sobrinho (1993) highlights that, under pressure because of the agreements made with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the government of João Figueiredo was forced to reinitiate the discussion regarding family planning policy in the country, which he officially did in March 1983 through a presidential message in the National Congress.

Despite the complexity of the implementation of this policy, João Figueiredo’s message also motivated the Ministry of Health to create the Programa de Assistência Integral à Saúde da Mulher – PAISM (Women’s Integrated Health Assistance Program). The program incorporated the suggestions and claims from the women’s movement, and ‘represented the first official discourse of the Brazilian government concerning Family Planning, and in addition it triumphed over the long debate between the anti-birth position and the anti-birth control stance’ (Sobrinho, 1993: 136; my tr.).

It is important to emphasize two crucial elements that profoundly marked the trajectory of more than 20 years of Brazil’s family planning history, which included women’s sterilization, the pro-birth tendency, the birth control debate, and the regulation of population growth. The first element refers to the discourse in Brazil to improve the ‘race’ in the first and second periods of the history of family planning in the country, although such a formulation would continue into the third period. There has been a global perception of Brazil as a country threatened by the amalgamation of blacks, whites, and indigenous people and also condemned to degradation and underdevelopment because of ‘a “race” of degenerated mestizos, sometimes considered sterile and sometimes extremely fertile’ (Roland, 1999). Such assumptions led the country to embrace a pro-birth position in order to guarantee a certain racial ‘quality’ of the population (read whiteness), but this endeavor was premised on the erasure of the large African-descendent population. It was an investment in whitening in the country, and indeed represented an attempt to annihilate such groups. The second element constitutes the birth control ideology, justified by the need to regulate population growth. This practice was even more disseminated and effective in the country after the United States’s economic and political statements regarding the ‘demographic boom’ (Costa, 1996).

Thus, both the first and second discourses need be understood as part of a set of policies that have exerted a disproportionate pressure upon black women’s reproductive rights and represent intrinsic racist and sexist views about their sexuality. Such policies in Brazil are quite similar to and have the same impact as documented by Dorothy Roberts (1997) in the case of African-American women. Roberts argues that ‘regulating black women’s reproductive decisions has been a central aspect of racial oppression’ (1997: 4). Roberts also calls attention to the importance of reproduction and claims that black women must have autonomy in relation to their bodies and sexuality. She stated that the reproductive rights issue is relevant ‘not only because policies keep Black women from having children but also because these policies persuade people that racial inequality is perpetuated by Black people themselves’ (1997: 5). As in the US, in Brazil there was ‘a belief that Black procreation’ represented a problem that would remain a major barrier to radical change (1997: 5). It is important to emphasize that such assumptions remain in our time.

When the black women’s movement came into view

As indicated by Sueli Carneiro (2003: 8), a prominent Afro-Brazilian feminist scholar and member of the NGO Geledés, the massive sterilization of women in the country since the 1970s occupied a very singular and privileged space in black women’s movement agenda. In 1988, the public announcements about the outcomes of using particular contraceptive methods in Brazil generated much controversy and left the country completely shocked, especially members of the women’s movement and the black movement. Data from the Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD/IBGE) in 1985 ¹¹ revealed that 44.4 percent of the women of fertile age (15–54 years old) who were married or had a live-in partner ¹² were sterilized in the country.

Carneiro (2003) also argued that what female sterilization achieved in such a short time (1960s to 1980s) was a massive phenomenon in the country that led black women to promote campaigns and debates to confront it. According to Carneiro, most of the women who went through the process of sterilization made this decision because they could not find support in the healthcare system to provide them with alternative contraceptive methods that, unlike female sterilization, would be reversible and would allow them to have children when they wanted to do so. The Brazilian public healthcare system had a major role in perpetuating this process. Thus, there was a contradictory situation between Brazilian women’s widespread access to female sterilization and their limited access to birth control pills. To illustrate such disparity, BEMFAM and PNSMIPF data from 1986 demonstrate that sterilization was widely accessible through the public healthcare network in the country which included social welfare responsible for the 45.3 percent, following by the private clinics with 42 percent, and governmental hospitals with 9.9 percent (Sobrinho, 1993: 26). In contrast to the accessibility of female sterilization, data from the same source show that, in the case of birth control pills—which would give women a certain amount of ‘autonomy’ to control their reproductive choices—the access was not mediated by public healthcare services, but instead by pharmacies (92.7 percent), the Health Secretariat (2.8 percent), private clinics (1.3 percent), and private family planning institutions (1.2 percent) (Sobrinho, 1993: 26).

Anne Dalsgaard’s (2004) analysis explains the circumstances in which sterilization became widespread in Brazil. She writes:

Public health units were not meant to deliver Family Planning services, sterilisations included, but a laissez faire attitude among legal and political authorities to the emerging unauthorized provision of sterilisation within the public health care system soon made the method available for a huge number of lower class women. However, though increasingly common up through the 1980s, sterilisation was surrounded by legal ambivalence and condemned by the Medical Ethical Code until November 1997 (Costa 1995: 22). Tubal ligations were therefore often performed under cover of caesarean sections and the individual physician paid ‘under the table’. This uncontrolled practice of sterilisation and its effects have been thoroughly criticized to be rampant among the poor nevertheless. (2004: 28)

Both Sobrinho (1993) and Dalsgaard (2004) offer significant insights into how the Brazilian state through its healthcare agencies promoted this process of mass sterilization of women. Developing a female sterilization policy was so central to state public health operations that this issue became the object of Brazilian legislation and intense debates took place between political representatives and feminists. This legislative dispute later turned into Law No. 209/91 that legalized the practice of sterilization in the country in 1991 (Carneiro, 2003). Nevertheless, as I explained earlier in this paper, in the history of family planning policies in the country, the state was not the only social force influencing this turn of events. There were other major actors such as military groups, the Catholic Church, and international agencies based inside and outside the country.

In addition, it is important to underline that parallel to the history of female sterilization in the 1970s, a public campaign emerged to promote the use of Norplant and Depo-Provera, a hormonal contraceptive implanted or injected into women’s skin and that would prevent them from getting pregnant for five years. However, Norplant and Depo-Provera was an experimental contraceptive that caused many serious side effects for the women who used them, such as premature menopause, excessive bleeding, depression, headache, hypertension, and circulatory diseases, among other serious symptoms. The widespread availability of these contraceptive methods by both public and private agencies was part of the general efforts to control women’s reproductive health of mainly poor and non-white women. The Norplant and Depo-Provera policy involved the ‘volunteer recruitment’ ¹³ of these women and was implemented in several countries such as: Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Finland, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States. The campaigns to implement Norplant and Depo-Provera ran from the 1970s to the 1980s, and ended in the early 1990s because of the protests and denunciations of the women’s movement in all regions where it was implemented (see Israel and Dacach, 1993).

Although this article focuses on the activism of black women’s movement in this entire process of reproductive health regulation policies, it is important to recognize that women activists in general, particularly those in the women’s movement, constituted the major forces in the struggle against those forms of birth control. Although black women have struggled, resisted, and organized since slavery, a distinct kind of black women’s organizing emerged in 1974 around the political debates during the third period of the history of family planning in Brazil as outlined in the first part of this article. Contributing greatly to this movement for reproductive health rights, many black women’s organizations became visible during the 1980s and 1990s. This particular emergence on the political stage is related to the circumstances and demands imposed by the conjuncture that had been unfolding since the 1970s and that profoundly impacted black women’s lives. In the previous sections, we outlined the social conditions up to 1980s. The main goal in this section to describe the activism of the black women’s movement during that historical period, drawing upon their struggles around reproductive health. According to Roland (1999) population statistical studies played a significant role in bringing together the studies on racial relations with data on reproductive health in the 1980s which provided much demographic information on the black population. The Núcleo de Estudos de População, NEPO (the Population Center Studies), of the University of Campinas is an illustration of this merging of social science data. The Center published a set of research analyses that advanced the studies of reproductive health among blacks such as marriage relations, fertility, and infant mortality. These specific studies disclosed key data regarding disparities among blacks (negros) and whites. It brought out the situation of inequality among dark-skinned blacks (pretas), light-skinned blacks (pardas), and white women. Publicized at the end of the 1980s, the research data collected from 1940–80 revealed significant demographic information.

During this period, the contemporary black women’s movement initiated its political activities in the country, and since then has defined or redefined crucial issues such as human rights, public policies concerning education, health, employment, among other matters, working by itself or in association with other groups (Roland, 1999). During the 1970s, black women worked inside the mainstream feminist movement, struggling to include a specific agenda regarding black women’s reproductive health rights, in particular trying to address the female sterilization issue. Nonetheless, when they realized that such concerns and demands would not be embraced by the feminist movement they decided to separate themselves and create their own organizing spaces.

In 1988, after the research data from the National Household Survey (PNAD, Pesquisa Nacional de Amostragem Domiciliar) revealed the extremely high rates of female sterilization in the country, black women’s activists initiated more aggressive strategies to fight this practice. In the 1990s, the debates and actions became more concentrated on ending sterilization. The NGO Geledés (founded in 1988) created the Programa de Saúde do Geledés (Geledés’ Health Program) in 1991 to promote discussion on the topic of women’s sterilization in Brazil, during which the health program suffered criticism from both their own members, the black movement, and some sectors of the mainstream feminist movement.

While the black movement only discussed and focused on women’s sterilization as an instrument of genocide of the black population and as a case of bodily injury considered a crime by national penal codes, some groups from the feminist movement claimed and stressed that sterilization represented a rebellious act and a radical refusal of motherhood and that no law should regulate women’s bodies, because it was the woman’s right to make her own reproductive decisions (Roland, n.d). The most intriguing aspects of these debates is the position occupied by black women activists in relation to the black movement and the feminist movement’s perspectives. Both movements—black and feminist—recognized female sterilization as a serious problem, but the first one understood this situation as just a matter of race, while the second one only recognized it as a matter of gender. Black women active in both movements, however, looked at female sterilization simultaneously as an issue of race and gender and they were fighting inside both movements to acknowledge this dual significance regarding female sterilization. Frustrated by the refusal to embrace their agenda—which focused on specific processes that affected black women—black feminists had no other alternative than to create their own movement. Thus, the 1980s and the 1990s witnessed a great proliferation of black women’s groups and organizations and a central focus on reproductive health rights. ¹⁴

According to Edna Roland (n.d), Geledés’s Health Program rejected the political position of black militants that giving birth should be a political task of black women. Geledés argued that such a view did not incorporate the discussion concerning reproductive health rights. Black feminists in Geledés who advocated on behalf of the health program considered female sterilization a complex response to a socioeconomic phenomenon that required the formulation of public policies and that contemplated an adequate healthcare system, women’s education and media campaigns, among other social actions. In addition, there was strong public support for the government to regulate the practice of sterilization in the country. However, in contrast to domestic and international sections that wanted to freely allow this practice of sterilization, aiming to control black and low-income women’s reproductive freedom and choice, the Geledés’ Health Program supported the regularization of this practice as a way to prevent abuses and to persuade the state and society to seek contraceptive alternatives for the target populations (Roland, n.d).

In 1990, the Conselho Estadual da Condição Feminina de São Paulo (State Council on the Feminine Condition) revisited the debates around the normalization of female sterilization and created a committee comprised of representatives of distinct sectors of society to contribute to this issue. The committee created a document with a series of recommendations to be incorporated into the project of normalization. In March 1991, the district representative Eduardo Jorge organized a panel to debate this issue in Brazil’s Federal House of Representatives. It was from this debate that emerged the first version of the legal project 209/91 (projeto de lei 209/91) supported by district representatives such as Eduardo Jorge and Benedita da Silva. After six years of debate in the National Congress, this project became the law that regulated the Family Planning Program. This first version stated that the minimum age of applicants for sterilization should be 30 years old instead of 25 years old (Roland, n.d).

According to Edna Roland (n.d), again controversy arose around the female sterilization issue among the distinct sectors involved in the discussion. In particular, segments of the black movement, especially in Rio de Janeiro, criticized the district representative Benedita da Silva, arguing that female sterilization was being used as a practice of genocide to exterminate blacks. Responding to these pressures, on 20 November 1991—on the National Day of Black Consciousness—Benedita da Silva and Senator Eduardo Suplicy proposed the organization of a Parliamentary Inquiry Commission comprised of members of the House of Representatives. This committee initiated its activities in 1992 with the aim of investigating the elevated rates of female sterilization in the country and verifying the employment of eugenic or racist policies in the reproductive health sector. The committee collected 27 testimonies, six of which were from the women’s movement, and three of whom were black women’s activists.

The woman representative of the Center of Articulation of Marginalized Population (CEAP, Centro de Articulação de Populações Marginalizadas) presented an accusation that the female sterilization was a genocidal practice against black population.

The women representative of the Movimento Negro Unificado (MNU) presented significant evidence that pinpointed the existence of racial discrimination related to female sterilization: (1) the existence of a document from a group named Assessoria e Participação (GAP) created in the Paulo Maluf government, whose stated goal was to reduce the black population in Brazil; and (2) a Human Reproduction Research and Assistance Center (Centro de Pesquisa e Assistência em Reprodução Humana) that produced campaign advertisements using racist theatrical pieces in order to justify the need for the existence and support of a birth control policy. This center was administered by a doctor named Elsimar Coutinho.

The third black woman was from the NGO Geledés. She argued that it was impossible to approach the issue of birth control without considering the consequences of this practice for women; she also emphasized that the demographic policies in the country should consider and respect women’s right to determine how they want to live. She argued that in order to comprehend the issue of the elevated sterilization of women in Brazil it was necessary to analyze the relations between rich and poor countries, since the perspective of the northern hemisphere was that the Brazilian population was constituted mostly of blacks, ‘Third World’, and second-class citizens (Roland, n.d; my translation).

On parallel with black women’s mobilization led by Gelédes in São Paulo, black feminists in Rio de Janeiro were also organizing around this issue, and in 1990, a project named ‘Mulher Esterilizada’ (Sterilized Woman) was created by women affiliated with the black organization CEAP (Centro de Articulação de Populações Marginalizadas: Center of Articulation of Marginalized Population). This project was coordinated by black feminist activist Jurema Werneck (currently a member of the NGO Criola). In 1991, she organized the Campaign Against the Massive Sterilization of Women (Campanha Contra a Esterilização em Massa de Mulheres) that denounced the existence of a genocidal plan against the Brazilian black population. This campaign mobilized the federal and state parliaments, and provoked the appearance of more Parliamentary Inquiry Commissions throughout the country to investigate the accusations of gendered racial genocide. The Commissions were implemented in Rio de Janeiro, Goiás, Pernambuco, Salvador, and Brasília (in the National Congress). According to Fátima Oliveira (1998), although this campaign accomplished its objectives in terms of building awareness among black movement’s sectors around the strategic and integral relevance of health issues in the anti-racist struggle, the campaign did not establish alliances on the national level with traditional sectors of the popular movement that have struggled in the health arena (Oliveira, 1998: 46). In addition, Oliveira points out that the campaign was not able to persuade healthcare professionals and the feminist movement in general to embrace and engage in the issue of racial/ethnic bias that played an important role in the sterilization of women in Brazil (Oliveira, 1998: 47; 2003). In Oliveira’s (1998) overview, this point was crucial because she affirmed that the nonexistence of racial/ethnic data (quesito cor) in the clients’ records in the healthcare agencies (such as clinics and hospitals) constituted a barrier to the black movement’s ability to provide the necessary evidence that would validate the campaign’s accusation regarding of state-sponsored genocide (Oliveira, 1998: 47).

Despite the limitations presented in these forms of political activities and alliances, the socioeconomic burden produced by female sterilization and the ideas of controlling women’s reproductive health fostered the development of contemporary Afro-Brazilian women’s feminist thought. For instance, several key publications appeared that time and some of the most important ones were: Esterilização: do controle de natalidade ao genocídio do povo negro (Sterilization: From Birth Control to the Genocide of Black People) (Silva, 1990); Cadernos Geledés 1: Mulher Negra e Saúde (Black Women and Health) (1991a); Cadernos Geledés 2: Esterilization: Impunidade ou Regulamentação? (Sterilization: Impunity or Regulation) (1991b); A Mulher Negra e a esterilização no Brasil: a vivência, o olhar pessoal e o enxergar político (The Black Woman and Sterilization in Brazil: A Personal Look and Political Close-Up) (Oliveira, 1991); and Saúde da Mulher Negra nos E.U.A. (Women’s Health) (Contact, 1988). ¹⁵

Edna Roland (n.d) affirmed that 1994 represented the establishment of black feminists in Brazil as a political entity (sujeito político). Roland identified the process of preparation for the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo as the period in which the black women’s movement emerged with an autonomous political position and this became even more clear at the national meeting and Declaration of Itapecerica da Serra (Declaração de Itapecerica da Serra). It is important to recognize from the perspective of the African diaspora, the similarities between the Declaration of Itapecerica da Serra and the Combahee River Collective (1983) Statement that was produced by a group of African-American feminists a decade earlier. This document articulated the unique perspective of the Brazilian black women’s movement, and it was written by the major political groups that were part of the movement in that period and strongly defined the position of this new political entity; it stated the following concerns, among others:

Finally, according to Roland (n.d) it was not an accident that the most important political document ever organized by the Brazilian black women’s movement, ratified by all the political forces that constituted this lobby group, had been produced in the reproductive health field because of the relevance of that theme within this movement. Roland affirms that at that particular moment of these women’s history, the thirteen organizations that were part of this large political force were engaged with activism on reproductive health. Despite political and communication constraints, the national Campaign Against the Massive Sterilization of Women and all the other activities organized by black feminists and activists around this issue were part of an insurrectionary period in the history of Brazilian social movements throughout the country. It is also important to highlight that, in a broader context, similar struggles were occurring throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Such synchronized political mobilization leads us to tie such regional circumstances to the international development strategies of neoliberalism and globalization. Such strategies restructured the social and political domains, generating ideas and practices to reshape geographically and demographically the so-called ‘Third World’, morphing local conditions to fit within the global system of domination.

Conclusion

This article discusses how the process of controlling black women’s reproductive health rights through policies such as female sterilization and family planning in Brazil played a major role in the emergence and consolidation of the black women’s movement as a strong political entity, particularly the contemporary expression of black women’s NGOs. I also identified the core social forces and influential elements—nationally and globally—that took part in the construction of the political, ideological, and cultural circumstances that contributed to the emergence of this social movement. In addition, the essay points to the existence of two key elements in the attempt to control women’s reproduction, especially among black women. On the one hand, there were the attempts to improve the ‘race’, in order to prevent the racial degradation of the country, which stimulated a pro-birth politics in order to assure the racial ‘quality’ of the population. The pro-birth politics endorsed racial mixing, and simultaneously created mechanisms to prevent or diminish the unions, marriage, and sexual relations between men and women of African descent. On the other hand, there were the birth control policies established to control population growth. Although distinct, both ideas were about regulating the black population’s reproductive health as a way to diminish birth rates. These endeavors were in essence deeply rooted in Brazilian racial common sense. As Roland (n.d) argues, the political discussions around female sterilization formed an opening for the black women’s movement to produce their own perspectives in the reproductive health field—which was distinguished from the theoretical and political overviews both of the black movement as well as the feminist movement; and thus, black feminism in Brazil was elaborated through this debate (Roland, n.d). In conclusion, drawing upon this sociohistorical narrative through regional, national, and worldwide contexts, this essay aims to demonstrate the complexity of black women’s struggles and how these contexts intersect and overlap, creating simultaneously local and global structures that oppress, exploit, and generate black women’s collective vulnerability while also creating the conditions that prompt black women’s resistance to such oppression.