Pamela Merritt blogs as Shark-Fu at AngryBlackBitch.com. Merritt studied Anthropology at Bard College at Simon’s Rock and Brandeis University. Merritt works as an Online Organizer and New Media Specialist in Missouri, a proud mentor through Big Sisters, and teaches at several shelters in St. Louis. Pamela Merritt is a member of the Women’s Health Leadership Network at the Center for American Progress and is a founding member of the Trust Black Women Partnership. She is a staff writer for RH RealityCheck, a contributor to Feministing.com and Shakespeare's Sister, and a featured contributor on National Public Radio’s (NPR) “Tell Me More” with Michel Martin. Merritt’s writing has been published in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Guardian UK, and Salon. In 2008 AngryBlackBitch.com was named one of the world’s 50 most powerful blogs by The Guardian UK.
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.
In Missouri, anti-choice Republicans opted to place the Missouri state government between doctors and their patients, and a Democratic Governor signed the bill into law. Reproductive justice activists must share our disappointment with the Governor and state legislators who voted for the abortion restriction bills.
A racist, anti-choice billboard has been placed in my city, in a neighborhood less than 20 minutes from my home. Yeah, it’s hard to put into words just how disgusted and insulted I am.
SB65 ignores rigorous medical standards and replaces them with vague, ambiguous new standards in a deliberate attempt to undermine a physician’s judgment and create confusion.
If the most dangerous place for a black baby is in a black woman’s womb, then how safe are black children in a black woman’s care?
As more states debate legislation to protect pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions on “moral” grounds, many consumers may face debates, forced public disclosures or delay at the pharmacy counter.
Montana House candidate Lindsay Love discusses how activism, gender, youth and reproductive health are affecting her state campaign.
Life doesn’t stop when a person finds out they will have to have major surgery. It keeps churning on and all the things associated with preparing for surgery gets added to the weekly to-do list.
That’s what choice is all about, having the ability to partner with a doctor to make decisions that are right for the individual. That doesn’t mean those decisions would be right for someone else, but that’s the point lots of people missed.
I’ve taught young women who thought drinking a certain brand of soda pop would prevent HIV/AIDS infection and who were convinced that certain forms of birth control caused permanent sterilization.
