White supremacy was one of the primary motivations behind the first movement to outlaw abortion in the United States. In 1858, the American Medical Association (AMA), led by Horatio Storer, launched a crusade to end abortion across the country. Prior to this period, abortion was legal in all U.S. states. Storer and white male physicians not only wanted to push women midwives — often Black, indigenous and immigrant women — out of the newly developing medical profession, but also had another, more sinister aim: these men wanted white male Protestants to politically control the country.
They feared that the growing number of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Germany and other largely Catholic countries, whom they viewed as separate and distinct "races," would produce more babies and usurp the political dominance of white Protestant Anglo-Saxon men. The reproduction of Black women, the majority of whom were enslaved at that time, was controlled by systems of white supremacy, and was not seen as a threat. Later, at the turn of the century, the focus shifted to the reproduction of women of color, many of whom were subjected to forced and coerced sterilizations in the U.S. until 1973. The white supremacist core of the movement remained the same, however.
