Abortion bans and the child welfare system are part of the same playbook to control our bodies and our families.
Banning abortion. Sending people to jail for losing a pregnancy. Separating children from their parents through child “protective” services that often don’t offer any real support, but punish families. This is what we call reproductive control. It is the state reaching into our lives and into our most personal family decisions.
The same people trying to control who gets to parent are also banning abortions and making basic medical care harder to access. The truth is: they don’t actually care about kids or their well-being. If they did, they would instead invest in families, not punish us.
reproductive justice
where everyone can make their own decisions about their pregnancies, when and how they build their families, and families have all the resources they need not just to survive, but to thrive.
Reproductive oppression is in this country’s DNA.
These laws are all part of a system that was built to control us. During slavery, Black women were forced to give birth and then had their babies taken from them. Indigenous children were taken from their families and forced into boarding schools and adoptions.
Now, we have laws that punish women for having miscarriages or getting an abortion. We have systems that police and tear families apart, rather than giving parents the real support they need to care for their children.
Today, 1 in 10 Black children will be forcibly separated from their parents by the family policing system before they turn 18.
The family policing system, also known as the “child welfare system” or “child protective services,” investigates nearly 3 million children a year.
The tactics change. The system stays the same.
At upEND Movement, we are building
a future where communities can truly be free.
Families need support, not fear of being ripped apart.
Too often, being poor and Black is reason enough for the state to accuse you of neglecting your kids. Police show up at your door and threaten to remove your kids and force them into the foster system. This is the reality for thousands of families every year.
We all want children to be safe. But when parents experience poverty and are struggling to make ends meet, they are blamed and surveilled instead of being supported. In fact, over 70% of cases investigated by the child welfare system can be attributed to poverty.
And what’s more, an increasing number of families are being targeted by the family policing system after someone has an abortion, according to this new report. Punishing people for making the healthcare decision that’s best for them and their families does nothing to make children safer – it does the opposite.
Instead of cruel intrusions into our lives, families need resources and support. Everyone should have the freedom to decide when and how we build our families, without government interference. And we should have all the resources to raise our kids with dignity.
