There is no shame in having an abortion. I consider the right to choose the conditions under which one becomes a parent to be one of the most important social values. But I believe that decades of discourse about poor Black women and unwed Black mothers being “welfare queens” who unfairly take more from the system than they put in has shamed many Black women into not bearing children that they otherwise might consider having. The idea that only middle-class, straight, married women deserve to start families is both racist and patriarchal.
