Cambridge Journal of Human Behaviour

SftP contributors not only focused on the external crossover of race, gender, and class in their writing, but took a similarly holistic perspective toward their own organisation, recognising their privilege as predominantly White American academics. Their critique was comprised of three facets: firstly, an awareness of the historical wrongs perpetrated by the US feminist tradition towards poorer women of colour, who were at best excluded and at worst actively targeted by a feminist movement that united with eugenicists to promote birth control. Secondly, writers pushed their readers towards a more inclusive feminist model, advertising actions advocating for non-White women targeted by population control. Thirdly, the magazine editors directly addressed criticism levelled at SftP regarding the contributors’ privileged social positions. They analysed unequal dynamics between SftP writers and those they were writing about, defending their need to use their position to spread awareness of the imperialist context of population control.

Linda Gordon’s two-part history of birth control, published in consecutive 1977 SftP magazines, demonstrated how SftP contributors openly recognised historical failings of US feminism (Gordon, 1977a, 1977b). The piece traced a historical narrative from the 1920s feminist push for legalisation of contraception through to the contemporary entanglement of birth control with population control. Gordon especially focused on the early links forged between eugenicists and feminist birth controllers. In the wake of World War I, she recognised a loss of political context within the US feminist movement following the destruction of the American Left (Gordon, 1977a). Concurrently, the eugenics movement grew, driven by a desire to remake the American population “in the image of those who dominated it politically and economically” (Gordon, 1977b, p. 9). Lacking the previous support of left-wing activists, feminists and eugenicists now shared a common goal of legalising contraception (although in the latter case, it was to reduce the birth rate of the “unfit”). The unlikely coalition worked because “[White] feminists had no strong traditions of anti-racism” (ibid., p. 11), and ‘a reservoir of anti-working-class attitudes’ (ibid.). Untethered from the Left, the movement was missing an ingrained political context and solidarity. 

This attitude was worsened by famous birth control activist Margaret Sanger’s vocal endorsement of population control (Gordon, 1977b). Gordon labelled this acceptance of eugenics a “desertion of feminism” (ibid., p. 11) that allowed population control to subsequently proliferate, admitting that contemporary “Third World” women rightly felt both let down by and excluded from the feminist movement. However, she noted that things were changing: while “feminism until recently has been primarily a movement of educated and prosperous women” (Gordon, 1977a, p. 11), it could regain its political context and alliances. Within a framework of socialist healthcare, birth control could achieve morally correct aims (Gordon, 1977b, p. 15). What was needed was a recombination of the US feminist movement with socialism, class action, and anti-racism movements.

Enacting the above reorientation of feminist objectives, SftP articles about population control often contained direct calls to action for their readers. SftP magazine had originated from the movement SftP, so this crossover of journalism and activism was not wholly unexpected. However, following up emotive pieces with suggestions of talks, protests, books, and workshops allowed a merging of magazine and movement, and in the case of population control, encouraged the mostly US academic readership to act in solidarity with poorer women of colour. In “Fighting sterilisation abuse,” Herman (1977) followed her summary of protests and legal cases around coercive sterilisation with a direct appeal to the reader. She was concerned that this was not a relatable issue for White American women, and that they were loath to join the fight because the population control “establishment” had been an ally to White feminism in the past, promoting abortion rights. However, the population controllers were “not interested in our right to control over our bodies” (ibid., p. 19); Herman appealed to readers to join women’s unions in actions against population control and to share their personal experiences of coercive birth control, highlighting the need for a united front. Her emphatic final line on forced sterilisation was that “only women can stop it” (ibid.), defining the topic as a gendered issue that would require a broader approach to feminism.

This focus on female empowerment and education was emphasised in multiple SftP articles across the 1970s. Authors suggested that women attend courses and read key texts such as the “Birth Control Handbook” (Arditti et al., 1970). Many SftP appeals of this kind appear to have been written by female contributors and specifically targeted at the female readership, aiming to bridge social, racial, and economic divides, but without seemingly including men. However, the article “International Women’s Day (IWD) 1975” (Ad hoc committee, 1975) broke from this tradition, making a point of noting how attendees (including SftP members) of the Boston IWD rally were “half women, half men, half Third World, half [White]” (ibid., p. 12). This was an explicit attempt by the authors to demonstrate a new approach to the fight against the population control “establishment,” with speakers making clear “the connection between women’s oppression and imperialism” (ibid.). It was this that united the marchers: imperialism was a common enemy to all, with solidarity the way forward.

SftP writers also engaged in direct dialogue with their critics, exploring their own privilege. An early issue of the magazine published two letters (Melcher et al., 1974) to the editor that were sent in response to previous SftP publications on population control. The first letter argued that SftP’s criticism of birth control in Latin America was supportive of neo-imperialism, and that SftP’s subsequent condemnation of such birth control programs was racist. The letter’s authors believed that since the women of the American Left had full access to birth control and were thus “freed from constant pregnancy” (ibid., p. 16), they were exploiting their privilege by postponing the same rights for Latin American women until they were situated within the correct ideological context (ibid.). Thus, they argued, it was counterproductive and morally wrong to fight against population control while such programs were still delivering birth control to those who needed it. 

The second letter by Dobbs had a similar tone, going so far as to dismiss linking the population control “establishment” with capitalism and imperialism as “superficial class analysis” (ibid., p. 17), and describing SftP contributors as “appallingly alienated from the masses” (ibid.). Just in printing these letters, the magazine’s contributors showed their willingness to confront such criticisms, and to explore whether they were blinded by their own positions as predominantly White American academics.

Is it possible for these authors to advocate on behalf of another group? These questions were addressed in the subsequent article by Bob Park (1974): “Not better lives, just fewer people”. The title summed up their counter-argument: birth control itself was not the problem, but when provided through population control programs, it did not improve standard of living. Park critically engaged with their own situated perspective as an author, asking what was the interest of the subjugated population themselves and thus “what should our position be toward it?” (Park, 1974, p. 18). Having decided that the goal of SftP was to advance class consciousness and struggle in all its forms, Park specified that since population control was a reactionary ideology, it came under such jurisdiction. This was part of a common solidarity between US and world workers in fighting militarism, sexism, racism, and capitalism (ibid., p. 22). SftP authors publicly confronted and dissected their own privilege, but held that the context of population control could not be demarcated from its actions. As such, it was SftP’s role to advocate for those whose voices would not otherwise be heard.

CONCLUSION

Throughout the 1970s, SftP contributors framed population control as an imperialist endeavour to maintain power in previously colonised nations. They demonstrated the ways in which population control programs not only maintained the status quo power balance between the US and the “Third World,” but also within the US itself. In both cases, the White, male, wealthy elite were intervening in the lives and rights of women, especially poorer women of colour, for their own gain. Thus, they argued, it was ultimately “imperialism, not overpopulation, which [was] denying so many the right to life” (Ad hoc committee, 1975, p. 13). SftP writers described how the concept of a “population bomb,” which would supposedly explode and trigger massive revolution, was propagated to instil a fear of “the Other” that would increase public support for population control and international development programs. An extended metaphor comparing population control to a war was invoked by both SftP and population controllers. In fact, the very first SftP article on these issues likens the US “establishment”‘s fervour for population control to their obsession with the Vietnam War (Arditti et al., 1970).

Meanwhile, population control organisations such as the Ford Foundation described its men in Asia as a “thin red line” (Connelly, 2008, p. 312), invoking Rudyard Kipling’s poetic image of imperialist soldiers holding the ranks in battle (ibid.). SftP contributors then layered their analyses of sexist, racist, and classist practices of population control over this socially nuanced background. In essence, their message was one of raising awareness, battling against propaganda which articulated ideas of population control simply “freeing” women from the burden of childbearing. As well as rejecting the “establishment”‘s supposedly altruistic motivation for population control, SftP writers highlighted how its means were unjustified. Targeting non-White, poorer women both within and outside the US with unnecessarily invasive and often coercive medical procedures clearly demonstrated how this was not about women’s emancipation. Kelly Moore articulates how the aim of SftP was to make it difficult to “treat scientific knowledge as distinct from the power relations that produced it” (2013, p. 187)—here one can see exactly this process in action, with SftP forcing the reader to confront the unbalanced dynamics that allowed population control to flourish. 

Part of this confrontation was to directly address both the readers’ and writers’ social privilege. The articles on population control were often written by White American academics, and so were lacking the voices of the poorer, non-White women they aimed to represent. At the time, there was a perceived split between White US feminism and a left-wing political context, highlighted especially by Linda Gordon’s articles. In pointing out this divide, investigating its origins, and subsequently setting out a more holistic social justice framework into which US feminism could progress, SftP contributors both acknowledged the mistakes of the past and looked to a more inclusive future. Advertising workshops, books, and protests to their readers, these writers manifested their vision, integrating their sceptical perspective of population control with direct actions that could be taken. They also recognised and published their critics’ perspectives in letters, creating a dialogue in which they could defend their positions while acknowledging other sides of the debate. 

I argue that the SftP articles on population control did more than just raise awareness about facets of the issue that were not widely reported on and ran counter to propaganda at the time. They also formed the basis of a new feminist attitude towards population control, which drew together the sentiments of anti-sexism, anti-racism, and class struggle under a common banner of anti-imperialism. This was part of a broader left-wing movement in the US at the time to establish commonality between causes, and arguably it paved the way toward what is now labelled “intersectionality”. Lawyer Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) defined the term “intersectionality” as the ways in which social identities such as race, class, and gender overlap with one another, bestowing power upon those whose social identities most closely fit the ideal citizen within that society. We can see that this is very similar to the analyses SftP contributors were performing, focusing on the social identities of population controllers and those they aimed to control, within a context of imperial power. Although it may not have had the same name, these analyses by SftP contributors represent a crucial shift toward modern intersectional feminism.

Today, former members of SftP have extended their involvement in an intersectional feminist approach to population control. While the US no longer participates in the more overt population policies of the 1970s, academics and activists around the world have called for renewed resistance to population control tactics that take place today (Hendrixson, 2019a). A statement signed by hundreds of individuals and organisations—including SftP contributors Betsy Hartmann and Judy Norsigian (Hendrixson, 2019b)—echoes past SftP publications as it brings attention to the continued coercive sterilisation of poorer women of colour, as well as other marginalised groups (Hendrixson, 2019a, p. 1). However, the statement’s authors take their intersectional approach further than seen in the 1970s: they draw on the “foundational work of the Black scholars and activists who created the concept of reproductive justice” (ibid., p. 3), before explicitly demanding a more equal reproductive health framework “that actively uproots racist, ableist and anti-LGBTQI biases in healthcare” (ibid., p. 4). Here, they are recognising the contribution and importance of non-White feminisms, and using this knowledge to promote an intersectional vision of women’s reproductive rights in the 21^st century. Thus, the 1970s SftP articles are an essential piece of history, documenting the contributors’ fight to incite a new kind of social movement that could counter the injustices of US population control. This work forms the foundation of the modern intersectional feminist critique of population policy.