African Americans and birth control
African Americans', or Black Americans', access and use of birth control are central to many social, political, cultural and economic issues in the United States. Birth control policies in place during American slavery and the Jim Crow era highly influenced Black attitudes toward reproductive management methods. Other factors include African-American attitudes towards family, sex and reproduction, religious views, social support structures, black culture, and movements towards bodily autonomy. Prominent historical figures and black communities have debated whether Black Americans would benefit from the use of birth control or if birth control is inherently racist and designed to reduce the Black American population. Early sexual and reproductive violence Before the abolition of American slavery, enslaved Black men and women were victims of legalized sexual and reproductive violence. Some sources estimate 58% of enslaved women and girls between the ages of 15 and 30 experienced sexual assault, often perpetrated by slave masters and other White men. White people saw Black women as objects used to meet the sexual needs of white men. They also experienced abuse at the hands of the wives of the White men. White men often raped and impregnated Black women to increase their enslaved population. In addition, enslaved African-American women were subject to frequent sexual exploitation through arranged marriages in order to produce children and sexually violent encounters initiated by other enslaved people. The Jezebel stereotype shifted blame onto Black women for their experiences with sexual violence and characterized them as hypersexual.This a stereotype that has continued within modern time. Black men were publicly lynched and castrated by white people in order to assert dominance and reduce their reproductive control. After the Emancipation Proclamation (1865) granted legalized freedom to enslaved Black people, Jim Crow laws and Black Codes perpetrated continuing sexual and reproductive abuse of Black people, particularly women. Laws against rape only protected White women and consequently failed to protect Black survivors of gang rape, genital mutilation, and lynching. Medical abuse and Experimentation Medical care for enslaved Black females was rare and often carrier the risk of forced medical experimentation. J. Marion Sims, known as the "father of modern gynecology", victimized enslaved African-American females with his surgical experiments by not administering anesthesia. Other physicians coerced Black women into experiments, including ones developing the cesarean section and ovariotomy. Black men were also subjected to unethical medical research, including the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Conducted by the United States Public Health Service, the 40-year study with examined the effects of untreated syphilis in Black men in Macon County, Alabama. During the study, a treatment for syphilis became available, but the subjects were misled and denied treatment. Many of the subjects' families contracted syphilis, while the men themselves either died or developed disabilities. Contraception Enslaved people and birth control In resistance to sexual exploitation and enslavement, Black women resorted to their own forms of birth control, drawing upon African folk remedies. Southern physician E. M. Pendleton reported that plantation owners frequently complained about "the unnatural tendency in the African female population