HIP-HOP TAKES A STAND AGAINST THE OVERTURNING OF ROE V WADE

Megan Thee Stal­lion per­forms at Gla­ston­bury 2022 (Twitter@HelloItsLevi)

“My body, my moth­er f—kin choice!” That was the clari­on call by Megan Thee Stal­lion to the throngs of fans at the Gla­ston­bury Fest­iv­al in Gla­ston­bury, Eng­land in response to the US Supreme Court over­turn­ing Roe v. Wade. The Texas nat­ive knows bet­ter than most of the pain this decision will have long term con­sid­er­ing that Texas was one of the first states to essen­tial crim­in­al­ize abor­tion and provide no excep­tions to cases of rape and incest.

For­tu­nately, she was not alone in the world of Hip Hop in speak­ing out against the rolling back of repro­duct­ive rights. Artists and groups such as Questlove, Pub­lic Enemy, Rage Against the Machine, CHI­KA, Steve Rif­kind, Lizzo, and oth­ers took to social media to vent their anger. Some took it a step fur­ther by offer­ing con­tri­bu­tions to repro­duct­ive justice organ­iz­a­tions, which is what Lizzo did in the form of a $500,000 dona­tion to Planned Par­ent­hood, one of the United States’ largest health care providers.

Kendrick Lamar, who is rid­ing high on the suc­cess of his latest mas­ter­piece Mr. Mor­ale & the Big Step­pers, added to his grow­ing lin­eage of speak­ing truth to power from the Gla­ston­bury stage by say­ing “God­speed for women’s rights”. At the BET Awards, Jazmine Sul­li­van issued a call to action to men dur­ing her accept­ance speech for Best Female R&B/Pop Artist. She said that she wanted men to speak up in sup­port of women.

“Stand up for us, stand up with us. If you’ve ever benefited from a woman mak­ing one of the toughest decisions of her life, which is to ter­min­ate a preg­nancy, you need to be stand­ing with us. This is not just a women’s issue. This is everybody’s issue.”

The Hip Hop Caucus issued the fol­low­ing statement:

“The Supreme Court’s decision to over­turn Roe v. Wade is a full front­al assault on repro­duct­ive rights that will have dev­ast­at­ing con­sequences for mil­lions of people, espe­cially Black, Brown, and Indi­gen­ous women. Elim­in­at­ing the right to safe, leg­al abor­tions increases health risks and endangers lives, because abor­tions will still hap­pen. This decision weak­ens the found­a­tion for many oth­ers fun­da­ment­al rights that should nev­er have to be chal­lenged or debated. Justice Thomas has made it clear in his opin­ion that leg­al pro­tec­tions for birth con­trol, same-sex and inter­ra­cial mar­riage — and even the right to have sex — are now vul­ner­able under this offi­cial decision.”

“When it comes to our bod­ies, we have the right to choose and no one, abso­lutely no one, should tell us the decisions to make. Hip Hop Caucus and our com­munit­ies will fight until our repro­duct­ive rights are restored state by state and we will make clear to law­makers that they must respect our votes this Novem­ber and respect our choice.”

As they point out, the Hip Hop nation is a mul­ti­gen­er­a­tion­al, mul­ti­cul­tur­al, and mulitra­cial move­ment who will bear the brunt of the anti­cip­ated exacer­ba­tion of inequit­ies when it comes to a lack of com­pre­hens­ive repro­duct­ive health care.

Accord­ing to a new study by Duke Uni­ver­sity, black women are more likely to die from forced preg­nan­cies as well as to have a high­er rate of mater­nal mor­tal­ity than the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. Fur­ther­more, these restric­tions will impact black women and oth­er women of col­or who are also deal­ing with a lack of health insur­ance and cul­tur­ally rel­ev­ant services.

The voices of these artists and organ­iz­a­tions carry sig­ni­fic­ance and could help spur a new move­ment with­in hip hop. While the cul­ture is known for its advocacy on mat­ters of racism, police bru­tal­ity, and mass incar­cer­a­tion there is not much his­tory on mat­ters of gender.

How­ever, let’s not for­get that Tupac Shak­ur fam­ously said that in “Keep Ya Head Up” in ref­er­ence to a woman’s bod­ily autonomy and hav­ing a baby “since a man can’t make one he has no right to tell a woman when and where to cre­ate one.” Salt N Pepa’s icon­ic clas­sic “Push It” speaks to a woman’s right to bod­ily autonomy and inde­pend­ence.  They also made it clear that if they wanted to do as they please it is none of our business.

There are seeds planted and now is the time for those seeds to blos­som. If Hip Hop has taught us any­thing it is to take some­thing out of noth­ing and win on one’s own terms. The poten­tial is there to form an effect­ive coali­tion to sup­port those in need of repro­duct­ive justice from the stage, to the record­ing stu­dio, to the vot­ing booth.

The col­lect­ive power of hip hop has rocked the world to its core and forced it to con­front long stand­ing issues that those in power largely want to ignore. This is no dif­fer­ent. It is just as urgent and as profound.

In the end, it is like a jungle some­times but we can­not afford to won­der about going under.

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Zachary Draves

I am a viol­ence pre­ven­tion edu­cat­or, act­iv­ist, journ­al­ist, aspir­ing film­maker, adjunct pro­fess­or of social justice and civic engage­ment at Domin­ic­an Uni­ver­sity in River Forest, Illinois. I am based in Chica­go, Illinois.

Latest posts by Zachary Draves (see all)

• MEGAN THEE STAL­LION RECEIVES MUCH NEEDED SUP­PORT FROM THE SOUTH­ERN BLACK GIRLS & WOMEN’S CON­SOR­TI­UM — Novem­ber 20, 2022
• HIP-HOP TAKES A STAND AGAINST THE OVER­TURN­ING OF ROE V WADE — July 13, 2022
• REMEM­BER­ING LISA LEFT EYE LOPES 20 YEARS LATER — April 25, 2022