News

Pretty Hurts: The Impact of Beauty Standards

here are so many stereotypes and societal expectations surrounding beauty and intelligence – expectations that make people believe that a beautiful person cannot be intelligent and that intelligent people aren’t attractive. Growing up, because I was a straight-A student, no one expected me to wear stylish clothes or be attractive in general.

I was a fat, dark-skinned black girl with a kinky hair texture, and if I weren’t smart, I wouldn’t have had much going for me in the eyes of most folks. I felt like the whole world was telling me that, because my body was neither desired nor wanted, my only contribution to society could be through my academic successes.

Dr. Ben Carson’s tall tales about abortion and black women

As a biracial black woman who has had an abortion, I find any implication that health clinics in black neighborhoods exist in order to push abortions on unwitting black women wildly offensive. To use factually incorrect rhetoric to render our healthcare needs and experiences irrelevant is an affront to our dignity.

Black Colleges Should Advocate for Breastfeeding Families

While many Black women do breastfeed, some unapologetically so, there is a running list as to why other Black mothers choose not to. For one, Black mothers are less likely to be encouraged by hospitals to breastfeed, typically the first point of contact for breastfeeding education. And many Black mothers are in under-resourced communities, where breastfeeding is discouraged or just outright impossible due to a lack of support.

Anti-Abortion Advocates Don’t Care About Black People

Rather than posting racist billboards in New York and throughout the South proclaiming a ‘mother’s womb to be the most dangerous place for a Black child’, anti-abortion advocates could support our efforts to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, and end the wage gap that takes Black women 19 months to earn what White men earn in twelve. They could help us increase access to prenatal care and well-baby check up visits to decrease the maternal and infant mortality rate.

Who Should Speak Up About Abortion Access?

Sharing my story has been a freeing and empowering experience that I wouldn’t change for a minute. But being a biracial black woman who tells the world about her abortion brings on a litany of racist and sexist epithets that take their toll on my emotional and mental well-being.

What You MUST Know About Planned Parenthood and Black Women

Let’s call the video what it is — the latest in the anti-abortion movement’s appropriation of civil rights and its crass manipulations of history. And it won’t be the last because abortion opponents have long capitalized on the very real history of how exploiting Black bodies has been foundational to the United States, whether we talk about slavery, medical experimentation or mass incarceration.

Lessons on the 10 Year Anniversary of My Abortion

For the past four years I have shared my abortion story with thousands of people; from cab drivers and rally attendees, to abortion patients who stayed at my home while traveling for their abortion and people on the Internet. It’s a weird feeling to talk about my abortion, a deeply personal experience, with strangers, but it’s actually quite comforting.

Anti-Choice Group Distorts the Truth About Planned Parenthood

Last week, an anti-abortion organization, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released a heavily edited nine minute video of a three hour lunchtime meeting with Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Senior Director of Medical Services Dr. Deborah Nucatola claiming to have “proof” that the organization was harvesting fetal organs and selling them for profit.

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