On May 31, 2019, The Rumpus highlighted Dorothy Roberts and this foundational text in a curated reading list issue titled “What to Read When Women’s Bodies Are Under Attack.”
HOWEVER: My research suggests that the quote “no woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body” actually belongs to birth control activist Margaret Sanger who made the statement in her 1920 book Woman and the New Race. Nonetheless, it is also frequently associated with legal scholar Dorothy Roberts because Roberts has analyzed and quoted Sanger’s words in her groundbreaking 1997 book, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty.
