Motherhood, the Right to Choose and Toni Morrison’s Mothers

Abstract

In June 2022 the US Supreme Court terminated women’s constitutional right to abortion. The courts reaffirmed the pronatalism that has come to define and circumscribe women’s lives and choices. The paper begins with examining how the ‘mother’ is not created merely through the biological act of birthing, but more through the discourses of patriarchy, race, law and class. It cannot bode well when the courts and a culture privilege fetal rights over women’s rights. However, even as one condemns the attack on the US women’s reproductive autonomy, one needs to concede that there can be no real discussion of a woman’s right to abort without a concomitant discussion of a woman’s right to mother. Both are after all reproductive choices that should be available to all women at all times. The paper attempts to examine how reproductive rights in the US have often been contingent on the skin tone of the birth giver. Black women in the US have historically and routinely been denied reproductive rights. They have been compelled to birth or been refused mothering rights when they birthed out of choice. The paper examines how the US electorate, including white women, has permitted politicians of various hues to link welfare with black women’s reproductive choices and how even the withdrawal of the right to abort will impact black women more than white women. In this context, the paper examines select texts of Toni Morrison which offer a veritable archive of the reproductive rights denied to black women. Her novels remind us how black mothering has always been performed under tremendous strain and scrutiny as US moved from slavery to neo slavery.