Sev­er­al years ago, dur­ing their ​“annu­al argu­ment about abor­tion,” doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Faith Pennick’s pro-life friend assert­ed that as African Amer­i­cans, they shouldn’t be argu­ing in the first place, since abor­tion is a ​“white woman’s issue” and black women have more impor­tant things to wor­ry about.

Black women frequently feel a tension between asking for government support for access to family planning and opposing efforts by policymakers to use birth control to limit family size.

Shocked by this state­ment, Pen­nick start­ed doing exten­sive research to dis­pute her friend’s asser­tion, and the result was Silent Choic­es, an award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary that explores black women’s expe­ri­ences with abor­tion – a top­ic Pen­nick and oth­er black repro­duc­tive rights activists say is blan­ket­ed in silence.

“White women not only allow them­selves to talk about this issue, but will­ing­ly own it and take it on as the bell­wether of pol­i­tics, of why they vote,” Pen­nick says. ​“But as black women, we feel if we acknowl­edge we have abor­tions, or even con­sid­ered hav­ing an abor­tion, we’re going to be looked down upon not only as women, but as a race.”

This silence is sig­nif­i­cant, Pen­nick says, when one con­sid­ers a recent study by the Guttmach­er Insti­tute that shows black women obtain abor­tions at rates three to five times high­er than white women.

Through her research, she dis­cov­ered not only a per­va­sive hush on black abor­tions in the pub­lic sphere, but, per­haps more sur­pris­ing­ly, with­in black fam­i­lies and their communities.

This silence, Pen­nick says, cuts across all class lines. ​“In my expe­ri­ence, both in research­ing and mak­ing Silent Choic­es as well as in my per­son­al cir­cles” she says, ​“mid­dle-class, col­lege-edu­cat­ed black women are just as uncom­fort­able talk­ing about abor­tion or acknowl­edg­ing that they had abor­tions as poor work­ing-class black women.”

Pen­nick says the rea­sons for this self-cen­sor­ship are com­pli­cat­ed, and are root­ed in the his­to­ry, mythol­o­gy and stereo­types that sur­round African-Amer­i­can women and their repro­duc­tive rights, as well as a deeply reli­gious culture.

Accord­ing to a 2009 report by the Pew Forum on Reli­gion & Pub­lic Life, near­ly eight in 10 African Amer­i­cans claim that reli­gion is very impor­tant in their lives, com­pared with just over half of all U.S. adults. And while black church­es have his­tor­i­cal­ly served as bea­cons of polit­i­cal activism in this coun­try, most of them have remained mute on the issue of abor­tion. ​“Black church­es are very left as far as their polit­i­cal views on cer­tain issues,” Pen­nick notes, ​“but when it comes to some­thing like abor­tion, there’s this weird sort of break, like a split personality.”

One of the most per­va­sive stereo­types attached to this issue, Pen­nick says, is the image of the black woman as sex­u­al­ly promis­cu­ous. ​“If we talk about abor­tion,” says Pen­nick, ​“it might make peo­ple think we’re freaks who just love sex. Not that there’s any­thing wrong with lov­ing sex, but we’re giv­ing the racists ammu­ni­tion to say, ​‘See, look at those sluts.’ “

To illus­trate how this stereo­type con­tin­ues to thrive in con­tem­po­rary soci­ety, Pen­nick points to the dis­cov­ery in 2008 that Bris­tol Palin – the 17-year-old, unwed daugh­ter of the GOP’s vice-pres­i­den­tial can­di­date – was preg­nant. ​“Some­how, for con­ser­v­a­tive whites, it rein­forced their tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly val­ues because she kept the baby and got engaged,” Pen­nick says. ​“But if that had been Sasha or Malia Oba­ma, if they had been 16 or 17 and had got­ten preg­nant, oh my, every con­ser­v­a­tive in this coun­try would have been say­ing, ‘[The Oba­mas] have no fam­i­ly val­ues, they’re hor­ri­ble parents.’ “

Dorothy Roberts, a law pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty and author of Killing the Black Body: Race, Repro­duc­tion, and the Mean­ing of Lib­er­ty, traces the promis­cu­ity stereo­type direct­ly to the orig­i­nal defens­es of slav­ery that ​“paint­ed Africans more like ani­mals than human beings, peo­ple who were sex­u­al­ly licen­tious and didn’t have the intel­lect to con­trol their bod­i­ly drive.”

His­tor­i­cal­ly, black women’s child­bear­ing has been por­trayed as irre­spon­si­ble and in need of gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion, Roberts says. Prac­tices reflect­ing these stereo­types have includ­ed such things as fam­i­ly caps for wel­fare recip­i­ents, forced ster­il­iza­tion, and the dis­tri­b­u­tion of risky birth-con­trol med­i­cines such as Nor­plant and Depo-Provera to poor black women. ​“It’s no won­der black peo­ple would think there’s an effort to stop us from hav­ing chil­dren, and that affects how we think about abor­tion,” Roberts says.

Anoth­er rea­son for the silence may be a lin­ger­ing belief that grew out of the 1960s black nation­al­ist move­ments: that abor­tion and birth con­trol are tools of whites in pow­er to lim­it the black pop­u­la­tion. ​“Even if peo­ple aren’t nation­al­is­tic,” says Roberts, ​“there’s a sense that child­bear­ing is a pos­i­tive thing that con­tributes to your whole com­mu­ni­ty, and there­fore hav­ing an abor­tion vio­lates that.”

Because of this com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry, Roberts says, black women fre­quent­ly feel a ten­sion between ask­ing for gov­ern­ment sup­port for access to fam­i­ly plan­ning and oppos­ing efforts by pol­i­cy­mak­ers and oth­ers to use birth con­trol to lim­it their fer­til­i­ty. It has also cre­at­ed schisms between black and white repro­duc­tive rights activists.

One exam­ple, Roberts says, is the bat­tle in the late 1970s over ster­il­iza­tion. “[Pri­or to reg­u­la­tions] there were cas­es where doc­tors would refuse to ster­il­ize white women even if they begged for it, because in the doctor’s view, why would a young white woman not want to have chil­dren? Where­as they were ster­il­iz­ing black women with­out their con­sent and some­times even knowl­edge,” she says.

In 1978, fed­er­al rules put into place to restrict ster­il­iza­tions includ­ed a 30-day wait­ing peri­od and guar­an­teed con­sent. To many white women, these reg­u­la­tions inter­fered with their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, yet women of col­or want­ed assur­ance they wouldn’t be ster­il­ized with­out permission.

In recent years, Robers says, anti-abor­tion groups have been attempt­ing to label abor­tion as ​“black geno­cide.” In 2008, Rep. Trent Franks (R‑Ariz.) pro­posed the Susan B. Antho­ny Pre­na­tal Nondis­crim­i­na­tion Act, which would ​“pro­hib­it dis­crim­i­na­tion against the unborn on the basis of sex or race.” His pro­pos­al died in part because women of col­or orga­nized to opose it.

Byl­lye Avery, founder of the Avery Insti­tute for Social Change and the Nation­al Black Women’s Health Imper­a­tive, says that while it’s true the black com­mu­ni­ty has remained large­ly hushed on the issue of abor­tion, lead­ing black women’s repro­duc­tive rights activists have been speak­ing loud­ly about it for years. The prob­lem, she main­tains, is that women’s rights orga­ni­za­tions – run large­ly by white women – have not been recep­tive to their ideas.

“One of the many fights we had with them … is when we said, ​‘Expand your agen­da to include all repro­duc­tive rights issues. Don’t just talk about abor­tion. What about infant mor­tal­i­ty rates, or access to birth con­trol, or ster­il­iza­tion abuse?’ When peo­ple hear these things linked togeth­er, they have a hard­er time iso­lat­ing you as just being pro-choice,” Avery says. ​“But that’s not some­thing they want­ed to do.”

In 1974, Avery cofound­ed the Gainesville (Fla.) Women’s Health Cen­ter, a women’s gyne­co­log­i­cal cen­ter that was also a first-trimester abor­tion clin­ic. ​“It was very impor­tant to me for peo­ple to under­stand that abor­tion doesn’t exist in iso­la­tion, that it’s includ­ed in the whole repro­duc­tive spec­trum,” Avery says. ​“So when peo­ple saw [birthing and abor­tion cen­ters] hooked togeth­er, it made it much more accept­able and they were bet­ter able to understand.”

Lori Hyl­ton, a mar­ried moth­er in New York who speaks in Silent Choic­es of hav­ing two abor­tions after becom­ing preg­nant with the same man while on birth con­trol in col­lege, says she too was acute­ly aware of cul­tur­al pres­sures to keep her expe­ri­ences secret. ​“A lot of it stems from this idea of, ​‘Why would you put your busi­ness in the street so white Amer­i­ca can judge you? Don’t they spend enough time judg­ing us as it is?’, ” says Hylton.

Even so, Hyl­ton believes it’s impor­tant that she con­tin­ue to share her sto­ry. ​“Hav­ing a choice is some­thing peo­ple take for grant­ed in this coun­try, and we need to be able to stand up for it. It doesn’t mean anyone’s push­ing any­one to get an abor­tion,” she says. ​“f I keep my secrets, then no one can learn from my experience.”