The image of the "Welfare Queen" still dominates white America's perceptions of Black women. It is an image that also continues to shape our government's policies concerning Black women's reproductive decisions. Proposed legislation to alleviate poverty focuses on plans to deny benefits to children born to welfare mothers and to require insertion of birth control implants as a condition of receiving aid. Meanwhile a booming fertility industry serves primarily infertile white couples.
In Killing the Black Body, Northwestern University professor Dorothy Roberts exposes America's...