PROGRAMS  |  BLACK CHURCH INITIATIVE AND LA INICIATIVA LATINA

Clearing House and Resource Center - Reproductive Health

The MultiCultural Programs Department Clearing House and Resource Center features a collection of theological books, sermons, speeches,  workshop presentations, youth and adult sexuality curriculums. The Clearing House and Resource Center serves as a resource to clergy, seminarians, health and human service educators, parents and youth. Resources are available for loan. For more information, contact bciinfo@rcrc.org or call 202-628-7700.

Books

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, And The Meaning of Liberty: Dorothy Roberts
Dorothy Roberts' passionate and well-documented book looks at a less-talked about side of the battle for reproductive rights: the history of the social and governmental control of African American women's bodies.

Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health Issues and a Womanist Ethic of Care, Emilie Townes
In this book, Emilie Townes focuses on the health care issues affecting African Americans and does so from a womanist perspective by paying attention to race and class as well as gender. Townes describes the lamentable history of health care in African American communities and the diseases that affect African Americans disproportionately – diabetes, hypertension, low-birthrate babies, and drug related illnesses – as well as cultural, genetic, and socio-economic factors that account for them. Townes then offers models of care that have worked in some African American communities and that need to be used on a broader scale. She explores healing models sensitive to class and cultural context, and provided practical recommendations relevant to the needs ot the Black Church and the African American community.

A Guide to the Clinical Care of Women and HIV, Jean Anderson

A Question of Choice, Weddington
In this impassioned autobiography, Weddington tells the story behind Roe v. Wade, including her own experience with abortion and the development of a legal strategy to challenge the law. Here too is what happened afterwards, as Roe became a fulcrum of a bitter struggle over issues of reproductive freedom and women’s rights. A Question of Choice is dramatic, inspiring reading for anyone who believes in choice, and anyone who cares about the American constitution.

Sacred Work: Planned Parenthood, Tom Davis
In the struggle for reproductive freedom, there are religious extremists at one end and liberal secularists at the other. Lost in this battle and often invisible to the public eye are the religious leaders and institutions that have worked in favor of protecting reproductive rights. In Sacred Work: Planned Parenthood and Its Clergy Alliances, Tom Davis brings to light the ways in which the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a leading reproductive rights organization, and the clergy are not as incongruent as they often are construed to be. Although clergy supporters of choice are rarely, if ever, given attention in the media, Davis shows that they in fact play a major role in advancing women’s rights, rebutting right wing arguments, and helping to make (and keep) abortion legal nationwide.

Sacred Choices, Dan McGuire
Opening a new conversation about a conflicted and polarized area, ethicist Daniel Maguire taps the wisdom of ten world religions and finds in them a true religious awe at the sacredness of life, a genuine openness to sexuality as a dimension of the sacred, and “alongside the ‘no choice’ position…and’pro-choice’ position that is too little known, even by adherents to the religion.”

Sacred Rights, Dan McGuire
In many of the world’s religions there is a restrictive and pronatalist view on family planning and this is one legitimate reading of those religious traditions. As the essays in this volume demonstrate, however, this is not the only legitimate or orthodox view. Seeking the counteract the simplistic idea that all religions are completely antagonistic toward family planning, the authors – all scholar-practitioners of the religions about which they write – present alternative interpretations of religions’ views about family planning. Arguing for the existence of equally valid traditions that allow contraception and abortion, they seek to escape the confines of oversimplified either/or, pro-choice/pro-life arguments. Instead, they point the way forward toward a more open discussion of family planning.

Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice, Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross, and Elena R. Gutierrez
A landmark volume, Undivided Rights documents the organizing legacy of women of color activists and reveals how African American, Native American, Asian and Pacific Islander American, and Latina women are transforming the fight for choice into a quest for justice.

Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America, Rickie Solinger
Leading historian Rickie Solinger argues that a woman’s control over her body involves much more than the right to choose an abortion. Reproductive politics were at play when slaveholders devised breeding schemes, When the US government took Indian children from their families in the nineteenth century, and when doctors pressed Latina women to be sterilized in the 1970s. Pregnancy and Power is filled with powerful accounts of the fights women have waged in this country to control their bodies and their destinies against anti-miscegenation laws, labor laws, anti-contraception laws and recent welfare reform laws that punish poor women for having children. Tracing the diverse plotlines of women’s reproductive lives throughout American history, Solinger redefines the idea of reproductive freedom, putting race and class at the center of the effort to control sex and pregnancy in America over time. 

Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement, Jennifer Nelson

It's Not the Stork: A Book about Girls, Boys, Babies and Bodies, Families and Friends, Robie Harris
Kindergarten-Grade 3–Harris opens by introducing two cartoon characters–a green-feathered bird clad in a purple shirt and blue high-top sneakers and his spike-haired friend, a bee. They wonder, So where DO babies come from? Their conversational commentary, given in word balloons, is a lighthearted supplement to a more focused narrative. Told in the second person, the text is straightforward, informative, and personable. Facts are presented step-by-step, starting from the similarities and differences between boys and girls bodies, moving to a baby's conception, growth in the womb, and birth, ending with an exploration of different configurations of families as well as a section on okay versus not okay touches.

Stolen Women: Reclaiming our Sexuality, Taking Back our Lives, Dr. Gail Wyatt
Gail Elizabeth Wyatt's Stolen Women explores how body identities are often shaped by deeply rooted myths and cultural stereotypes. Tracing black women's body images and sexuality from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, Wyatt powerfully explains in her introduction that "to the degree that we allow our sexual self-image to be defined by others, we will remain, as our ancestors were, stolen women, captives not of strangers but of the past, and of our own unexamined experiences. The challenge we face is to see ourselves not as others see us or want us to be seen, but as we are, as we were, and as we want to be."

Videos

Back Alley Detroit: Abortion Before Roe v. Wade, Daniel Friedman and Sharon Grimberg for Filmmakers Library

Women Like You (Available in Spanish and English), Pfizer, NAACP, Los Angeles HIV Prevention Trials Unit