Tear gas is so thick in a three block stretch of downtown Portland that the CS powder has permeated the park’s soil. You can feel the chalky effects of weeks-old chemical weapons as it tickles your throat and induces violent sneezing. Many publications from Oregon Public Broadcasting to Teen Vogue have recently warned protesters of the adverse effects of tear gas on the human body. More specifically, and much more shrouded in mystery, is its effect on the endocrine and reproductive systems of people with uteruses. While there have been reports of effects on people with penises, the anecdotal evidence has largely come from people with uteruses.
At what point, though, does an accumulation of anecdotal evidence become enough to constitute research results? And whose voices are we listening to when people offer their anecdotal evidence?
Portland is not the first place to use egregious amounts of tear gas on its residents. In our research for this post, we found that BIPOC have globally been subjected to the substance that was banned by the Geneva Convention as a war crime. In 1988, the United Nations attributed dozens of miscarriages to teargas fired by Israeli soldiers at Palestinians. During the military dictatorship in Chile, the government used teargas on its residents to the extent that a researcher at the University of Chile was able to begin researching reports of miscarriage by pregnant students. This research was subsequently stymied by said authoritarian regime and results remained “inconclusive.” Following the use of tear gas in Bahrain in 2012, Physicians for Human Rights reported that they had received reports of a “significant rise” in miscarriages in areas where tear gas was frequently employed. Since 2014, the United States has deployed tear gas against BIPOC protesters at least three times: Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 during the Michael Brown protests, Standing Rock from 2016 to 2017 during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, and during the migrant caravan crossing in Tijuana, Mexico in 2018.
Protestors already put a lot at stake to stand against state oppression, but many pay for it with their reproductive health. Some argue that the use of tear gas and other chemical weapons against protestors acts as a form of eugenics. The people who take to the streets to protest police brutality and facism are the state’s number one enemy, why wouldn’t the police have incentive to make sure those people aren’t able to reproduce. Or so the logic goes.
Reproductive justice is concerned with the right of all people to have equal access to the things that make a healthy community, and a healthy family. Beyond the frontline of the protests, the tear gas released into the residential areas of Portland makes its way into every open window, embeds itself into the soil, attacks the lungs of every neighbor, whether they agree with the protests or not. Many of the protests have gone down in North Portland, at the Police Union building and the North Police Precinct. These are also historically black neighborhoods that support the few people of color who haven’t yet been pushed out of Portland city limits.
For resistors to state violence, we see opportunities for mutual aid. Are you a seasoned researcher who knows how to turn anecdotal evidence into raw data? Or an herbalist with an insight on curatives? Ask yourself: What skills, perspectives, and energies do you have that you can dedicate to our collective power and resilience?