Pamela Merritt

Reproaction

Pamela Merritt is co-founder and co-director of Reproaction, a new direct action group forming to increase access to abortion and advance reproductive justice. Merritt studied Anthropology at Bard College at Simon’s Rock and Brandeis University. Merritt blogs at AngryBlackBitch.com, and was a founding member of the Trust Black Women Partnership. She has been a featured contributor on National Public Radio (NPR), and her writing has been published in the Chicago Sun-Times, Guardian UK, and Salon. In 2008 AngryBlackBitch.com was named one of the world’s 50 most powerful blogs by the Guardian UK.

The Sound of Silence: Where Is the Anti-Choice Outcry Over North Carolina’s Forced Sterilization of Women of Color?

Pamela Merritt

From the early 1900s up until the 1970’s, over 30 states had formal eugenics programs, that enforced compulsory sterilization of individuals deemed to be “unfit” and “promiscuous.” States sterilized people that were disabled, poor, people of color, and immigrants. North Carolina had a particularly aggressive program. Yet the silence from anti-choice groups on the issue is deafening.