From Reproductive Rights to Reproductive Freedom: Rhetorical Frameworks of Abortion, Parenthood, and Bodily Autonomy Before and After Roe v. Wade

At the one-year mark since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, there is an urgent, vital need for feminist scholarship that addresses the ways structural stigma and oppressive policy affect diverse groups of women and people assigned female at birth (AFAB). Accordingly, in this introduction to the special issue of Psychology of Women Quarterly, we provide a historical overview and timeline of reproductive rights and (in)justice in the United States in order to illustrate how we have arrived at this perilous moment in history. Reproductive (in)justice exacerbates inequities regarding who has been encouraged to reproduce, who has been denied reproductive autonomy, and who has been required to reproduce and refused the right to parent their children in safe environments. Accordingly, we aver the importance of centering an intersectional and reproductive justice framework in understanding how coalescing forms of oppression (e.g., racism, capitalism, sexism, ableism) circumscribe reproductive autonomy. We begin the special issue with articles that examine how social policy and structural oppression have violated women's and people AFAB reproductive healthcare, followed by articles that examine how such policy and oppression affect women's reproductive decision-making. We conclude this special issue with an article that centers reproductive justice advocacy in the ongoing fight for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.

FromRefusingStigmatizationtowardCelebration: New Directionsfor Reproductive JusticeActivism Carly Thomsen For the last two decades, scholars and activists have discussed the relationship between reproductive justice and reproductive rights frameworks and movements primarily in terms of the differences between them. With the wide adoption of discourses of reproductive justice — even by those mainstream feminist groups doing the type of work this concept intended to disrupt—it has become difficult to pin point the ways in which differences between the reproductive rights and justice models manifest. In this brief commentary, I highlight an unfortunate similarity between the two approaches today: a fear of celebrating abortion. This problem has multiple roots. Reproductive justice advocates, who have often directed their critiques at mainstream reproductive rights organizations, have worked to push mainstream feminists beyond understanding abortion as the single most important wom en's issue, citing both the impact of the eugenicist history of abor tion and contraception on women of color and women with disabili ties, as well as the many reproductive rights issues that have garnered less attention including forced sterilization, environmental toxins in breast milk, mandatory drug testing of women on public assistance, and the lack of social support for poor women to have and raise the number of children they want.1 At the same time, reproductive rights FeministStudies39, no. 1. © 2013 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 149 150 Carly Thomsen organizations have attempted to garner mass support for their issues through framing reproductive rights in relation to privacy, govern ment intrusion, and health, distancing themselves from issues of lib eration, rights, and justice.2 The combined result is a pervasive nega tivity toward abortion that transcends our movements and impacts broader cultural understandings of the practice. I draw from two examples of reproductive justice activism —Native women acting in response to South Dakota's abortion ban and a University of Califor nia student organization working against crisis pregnancy centers — to suggest new visions for refusing stigmatization and moving toward celebrating abortion. Abortion: Beyond Difficulty and Trauma "Pro-choice" politicians and reproductive rights activists alike often describe abortion as "one of the most difficult and complex deci sions a woman will ever make."3 A Planned Parenthood state affiliate claims that "reducing the need for abortion is a goal we can all sup port."4 When the largest and best known abortion rights organiza tions and their pro-choice political allies frame abortion in this way, abortion rights movements have a serious problem. The 40th anni versary of the Roe v. Wade decision is an apt time to call reproductive rights advocates to move away from an apologist framework through which abortion is described as negative, harmful, and regrettable.5 It is certainly worth questioning the notion that reducing abortion rep resents progress and that abortion is always a difficult decision. One in every three US women will have an abortion in her life time. For many of these women, abortion is a simple, easily made decision. It is one component of women's healthcare, and it is not any more physically or emotionally damaging than a Pap smear for the vast majority of women who opt to undergo the procedure. As repro ductive rights advocates are fond of pointing out, abortion is actually safer than childbirth. And the vast majority of women report feeling relief after abortion; according to the American Psychological Associ ation, significant negative responses to abortion are rare.6 At the same time, feminist advocates for reproductive justice rec ognize that this narrative does not speak to all women's experiences. It was, after all, the lack of recognition of diverse needs and experi ences that led to the development of reproductive justice frameworks, Carly Thomsen 151 scholarship, and activism. In our attempts to account for the het erogeneity of women's lives and concerns, we acknowledge that not all women experience abortion in the same way, that it can be lib eratory and painful, devastating and empowering, all at the same time. Some women find it entirely liberating while others describe being traumatized by the experience. In our attempts to recognize the complexity of women's experiences, we find ourselves respond ing to and perpetuating the false claims of antiabortion...

This paper analyses emerging trends in judicial approaches to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in Africa, arguing for a paradigm shift from the conventional rights-based framework that emphasises “choice” to an Africentric Reproductive Justice framework (ARJ). It employs a qualitative research design, combining a literature review with an in-depth analysis of eight purposively selected SRHR court cases from African countries and the United States to examine how recent judicial decisions reflect a growing integration of reproductive rights with broader social justice issues. The proposed ARJ framework is grounded in the reproductive justice theory, incorporating conceptual principles of decoloniality and Africentrism, which emphasises amplifying positive African narratives, leveraging African-based judicial institutions, involving civil society organisations, and empowering African individuals to engage with judicial systems for reproductive justice. This approach addresses intersectionality, race, class, gender, and socioeconomic status in SRHR issues in Africa. The findings demonstrate that African courts are increasingly balancing competing rights and interests in culturally sensitive ways, reflecting an evolving understanding of reproductive justice in African contexts. This paper concludes by arguing that achieving genuine reproductive justice necessitates moving beyond the “right to choice”. It requires deconstructing enduring structural barriers and addressing historical injustices perpetuated by colonial legacies, and the ARJ framework, rooted in decolonial principles, presents a holistic, context-specific approach towards achieving equitable SRHR for all individuals on the continent.

Reproductive Injustice at the Southern Border and Beyond: An Analysis of Current Events and Hope for the Future.

The reproductive experiences of women and girls in the 20th-century United States followed historical patterns shaped by the politics of race and class. Laws and policies governing reproduction generally regarded white women as legitimate reproducers and potentially fit mothers and defined women of color as unfit for reproduction and motherhood; regulations provided for rewards and punishments accordingly. In addition, public policy and public rhetoric defined “population control” as the solution to a variety of social and political problems in the United States, including poverty, immigration, the “quality” of the population, environmental degradation, and “overpopulation.” Throughout the century, nonetheless, women, communities of color, and impoverished persons challenged official efforts, at times reducing or even eliminating barriers to reproductive freedom and community survival. Between 1900 and 1930, decades marked by increasing urbanization, industrialization, and immigration, eugenic fears of “race suicide” (concerns that white women were not having enough babies) fueled a reproductive control regime that pressured middle-class white women to reproduce robustly. At the same time, the state enacted anti-immigrant laws, undermined the integrity of Native families, and protected various forms of racial segregation and white supremacy, all of which attacked the reproductive dignity of millions of women. Also in these decades, many African American women escaped the brutal and sexually predatory Jim Crow culture of the South, and middle-class white women gained greater sexual freedom and access to reproductive health care, including contraceptive services. During the Great Depression, the government devised the Aid to Dependent Children program to provide destitute “worthy” white mothers with government aid while often denying such supports to women of color forced to subordinate their motherhood to agricultural and domestic labor. Following World War II, as the Civil Rights movement gathered form, focus, and adherents, and as African American and other women of color claimed their rights to motherhood and social provision, white policymakers railed against “welfare queens” and defined motherhood as a class privilege, suitable only for those who could afford to give their children “advantages.” The state, invoking the “population bomb,” fought to reduce the birth rates of poor women and women of color through sterilization and mandatory contraception, among other strategies. Between 1960 and 1980, white feminists employed the consumerist language of “choice” as part of the campaign for legalized abortion, even as Native, black, Latina, immigrant, and poor women struggled to secure the right to give birth to and raise their children with dignity and safety. The last decades of the 20th century saw severe cuts in social programs designed to aid low-income mothers and their children, cuts to funding for public education and housing, court decisions that dramatically reduced poor women’s access to reproductive health care including abortion, and the emergence of a powerful, often violent, anti-abortion movement. In response, in 1994 a group of women of color activists articulated the theory of reproductive justice, splicing together “social justice” and “reproductive rights.” The resulting Reproductive Justice movement, which would become increasingly influential in the 21st century, defined reproductive health, rights, and justice as human rights due to all persons and articulated what each individual requires to achieve these rights: the right not to have children, the right to have children, and the right to the social, economic, and environmental conditions necessary to raise children in healthy, peaceful, and sustainable households and communities.

Reproductive Justice and (the Politics of) Transnational Gestational Surrogacy Eva-Sabine Zehelein (bio) Discounted Life: The Price of Global Surrogacy in India. By Sharmila Rudrappa. New York: New York University Press, 2015. 224 pages. $89.00 (cloth). $27.00 (paper, e-book). How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump. By Laura Briggs. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. 304 pages. $29.95 (cloth). Labor of Love: Gestational Surrogacy and the Work of Making Babies. By Heather Jacobson. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016. 218 pages. $95.00 (cloth). $28.95 (paper, PDF, e-book). Reproductive Justice: An Introduction. By Loretta J. Ross and Rickie Solinger. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. 360 pages. $85.00 (cloth). $27.95 (paper, e-book). Wombs in Labor: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India. By Amrita Pande. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. 272 pages. $90.00 (cloth). $30.00 (paper, e-book). The term reproductive justice was coined in 1994 by black feminists. As a concept, it moves the center of attention and activism away from reproductive rights and the narrow focus on pro-choice (the legal right to abortion, symbolized by the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade) both toward an intersectional analysis of race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and age, and toward activism for enhanced public resources and governmental spending, especially when it comes to comprehensive (reproductive) health care, jobs and wages, education and child care, housing, civil rights and social services—after all, what good is the legal right to abortion when you cannot afford it, because your wages are low and/or you do not have access to health care, for instance, because you do not have insurance or you belong to the 8.2 percent of all [End Page 889] American women who live in rural counties with no ob-gyn near or far, or in one of twenty-three states with TRAP laws (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers)?1 What about a meaningful right to have a child? What would it take to ensure that everyone who does not want to terminate a pregnancy has the ability to raise that child, free from state violence and with the expectation of housing, education, and enough to eat? To frame reproductive rights as a negative right—freedom from governmental interference—leads to an understanding of reproductive health as a domain of personal responsibility and "free choice." And this not only eclipses the socioeconomic, political, and legal realities within which "free choice" can allegedly be exercised but also occludes the view on neoliberal policies of the last decades that have fostered racialized poverty and structural inequality. To broaden the scope of reproductive rights, reproductive justice advocates center their argument on human rights and social justice, and move away from issue silos by employing an intersectional approach. Loretta J. Ross and Rickie Solinger have written an excellent introduction to both the concept and the activist practice of reproductive justice, and Laura Briggs, Amrita Pande, Sharmila Rudrappa, and Heather Jacobson have published outstanding examples of focus studies in that field. Briggs and Jacobson look at the United States, Pande and Rudrappa at India. Briggs argues that neoliberal policies—the privatization of wealth and care—were instantiated through specifically reproductive politics of welfare reform, the immigrant politics of care work, and most recently, the foreclosure crisis, and have fundamentally transformed households, including the unhappy recourse to gay marriage, disproportionate Black infant mortality, and the structural infertility of later childbearing that has given rise to assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). Pande, Rudrappa, and Jacobson analyze one specific crystallization point of debates about reproductive freedom, practice, and justice, namely, (transnational) gestational surrogacy, in India and the United States, respectively. With their "collaborative gift" (6) Reproductive Justice: An Introduction, Ross, an activist and cofounder of SisterSong, and Solinger, a renowned historian, present the first "primer" (1) that tells the movement's herstory, explains the concept, and draws "a creative vision for achieving human rights protections" (1). The authors begin with clear and concise definitions: reproductive justice (RJ) is understood as a "contemporary framework for activism and for thinking about the experience of reproduction" as well as a political movement "that...

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Disability rights and reproductive rights are sometimes understood to be in tension with one another due to disability advocates’ critiques of certain reproductive technologies. This polarized historical narrative can obscure the significant alignments among advocates for disability justice and reproductive justice, including shared values and priorities such as bodily autonomy and attention to structural issues of access. This article offers an overview of the tensions and alignments between disability and reproductive rights versus disability and reproductive justice, exploring how a justice-oriented approach can reframe purported areas of impasse. It then attends to four major principles of reproductive justice, considering how they respond to histories of reproductive ableism and intersect with the insights of disability studies scholars and disability justice activists. Finally, the article identifies future directions for research and scholarship grounded in these shared principles.

We examine the millennium development goals (MDGs) not only because they constitute an attempt by the Global North to steer development in the Global South but, crucially, for their vague articulation of women’s reproductive health and rights. Using a postcolonial lens, we highlight some of their shortcomings and paradoxes concerning women’s reproductive justice and problematise the absence of discourse focusing on reducing inequalities. At the core of these shortcomings is the limited reflection on or engagement with neoliberalism, neoconservativism and the growing religious fundamentalism, particularly its views on sexual and reproductive rights. While neoliberalism claims to offer women agency to make free choices, its emphasis on individuals as free entrepreneurs holding sole responsibility for their financial situation is a deterrent for most women, because neoliberalism simultaneously undermines the institutions that enable self-sufficiency. In addition, neoconservatism and religious fundamentalism focus on preserving traditional family structures, regarding marriage as a heterosexual institution and the rights of the unborn as central. This is particularly critical for women in the Global South, especially African countries, where the application of the gag rule by Global North funding agencies restricts access to sexual and reproductive rights, including abortion, in the name of protecting the unborn.

This dissertation aims to analyze the debate on reproductive rights in the United States in the post-Roe era from the perspective of Black feminism and the pursuit of reproductive justice, a crucial concept defended and promoted by Black women. The protection of reproductive rights has become a central issue in American politics and society. With the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 in the United States, new legal, political, and social challenges have arisen, significantly impacting women's access to reproductive health services. This context underscores the importance of the debate on reproductive rights in the United States. Adopting the perspective of Black feminism, this dissertation highlights the intersections of race, gender, and class that shape Black women's experiences in pursuing reproductive rights. The research examines the strategies and resistances developed by African American communities to ensure reproductive justice amidst restrictive policies and attacks on reproductive rights. This includes the mobilization of activists, community organizations, and political leaders in advocating for policies and programs that promote the reproductive autonomy of Black women and address disparities in reproductive health. It is essential to understand and address the complexities of reproductive rights in the post-Roe era, aiming to achieve reproductive justice that is truly inclusive and equitable for all women.

The main objective of this study is to identify the barriers that prevent Roma women and girls from accessing reproductive rights derived from reproductive justice by analysing the discourses of service providers as a facilitating source of information. A qualitative study including nine semi-structured in-person interviews with community service providers was conducted in April-June 2019. The interview script addressed intercultural competences, views on gender discrimination against Roma women, resources available to fight against this discrimination, knowledge and use of these resources in reproductive justice, as well as the networks of actors involved. The qualitative analysis involved a discourse analysis. In the analysis, three focal areas were defined around which barriers to access spaces inspired by reproductive justice for Roma women could be identified. In each of the focal areas (stereotypes, discrimination and intercultural competences), discourses and practices have been observed in contrasting ways that can prevent access, as well as others that can facilitate access based on prejudices about Roma culture and people. The relationship models between professionals and users of the Roma population project stereotypes that are an obstacle in terms of accessing reproductive justice. The right of Roma women to preserve their culture and to actively participate in policies that affect them is not included and guaranteed in public policies. The intention to include the Roma population’s situation in an inclusive narrative exists, although without short-term effects. Reproductive justice is an absent framework within professional intervention and the institutional system. DOI: 10.1080/26410397.2024.2439661

Reproductive rights and justice frameworks, which take an intersectional and social justice approach to reproductive health, are compatible with social work’s philosophical and theoretical foundations and its practical goals of advocating and promoting social justice. However, reproductive rights and justice are not frequently addressed in social work publications, an important gap that should be addressed. The search term “reproductive justice” was used to identify 10 articles published between 1994 and 2018 among the top 50 social work journals (using SCImago Journal and Country rankings). Only 3 of these 10 articles focused substantively on reproductive justice. By comparison, 55 article were identified with the search term “reproductive rights.” An analysis of the reproductive justice articles was conducted for purpose and topic, location, study population, year, journal, key findings, and implications for the social work profession. All articles called for an increase in research on reproductive justice topics. Encouragingly, these articles also included an analysis of the role of the social work profession with these frameworks. However, there is a lack of articles on reproductive justice, and the range of topics, and the methodological approaches, covered are limited. Although the increase in reproductive rights literature is heartening, there is a need for reproductive justice framings in social work practice and research.

Reveals both the promise and the pitfalls associated with a human rights approach to the women of color-focused reproductive rights activism of SisterSong How did reproductive justice—defined as the right to have children, to not have children, and to parent—become recognized as a human rights issue? In Reproductive Rights as Human Rights , Zakiya Luna highlights the often-forgotten activism of women of color who are largely responsible for creating what we now know as the modern-day reproductive justice movement. Focusing on SisterSong, an intersectional reproductive justice organization, Luna shows how, and why, women of color mobilized around reproductive rights in the domestic arena. She examines their key role in re-framing reproductive rights as human rights, raising this set of issues as a priority in the United States, a country hostile to the concept of human rights at home. An indispensable read, Reproductive Rights as Human Rights provides a much-needed intersectional perspective on the modern-day reproductive justice movement.

The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH) is the only national reproductive justice organization dedicated to building Latina power to advance health, dignity, and justice for 25 million Latinas, our families, and communities in the United States. We do this through leadership development, community mobilization, policy advocacy, and strategic communications. We work on a range of issues that affect the ability of Latinas to live with salud, dignidad, y justicia--health, dignity, and justice--including abortion access and affordability, sexual and reproductive health equity, and immigrant women's health and rights. We are also deeply committed to centering the needs of those most affected by reproductive oppression: low-income people, LGBTQ people, pregnant and parenting youth, and undocumented people. Since our inception, we have defined reproductive justice to include social justice and human rights for LGBTQ people. The LGBTQ liberation and reproductive justice movements share the values of bodily autonomy, sexual liberation, and the ability for persons to decide whether, when, and how to build families and relationships of their choosing. At the core of each movement is the belief that our most personal decisions should be free from political interference. Right now, we're in the middle of an incredibly challenging time for social justice advocacy. It's true--and exciting--that we have seen tremendous gains in legal protections for LGBTQ people and we certainly advanced in terms of a national conversation about the need for immigration reform. At the same time, it's no secret that reproductive rights have seen tremendous setbacks, particularly at the state level. But the rollback in legal protections for abortion is not a new threat or the only threat. While the Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade enshrined the right to safe, legal abortion in concept, it did nothing to ensure that those services would be available or affordable. (1) Nor did Roe prevent the steady march of more restrictive abortion laws that seek to close clinics, punish providers, shame and burden women, and ultimately reduce abortion rights to a legal fiction. One of the clearest examples of this is the Hyde amendment, signed into law each year by Congress since 1976--my entire lifetime. (2) The Hyde Amendment and other bans on insurance coverage for abortion force women to make impossibly difficult choices in order to keep themselves and their families healthy. We hear these women's stories, women who have to choose between paying for rent, groceries, childcare, or paying for a needed abortion. In some respects, our biggest challenges today are those that have been with us for decades: the need to make civil, human, and reproductive rights a lived reality for our communities. And while some policymakers and advocates are recognizing the need to work across issues and to act in solidarity, that doesn't always translate to seeing the connections between issues. It is clear to me that the need for an intersectional analysis--the very heart of reproductive justice--is greater than ever. Even with the gains we've made, and a majority of the public on our side, we are living in an incredibly hostile time. The right, supported by an entrenched, moneyed, and increasingly emboldened minority, has succeeded in shifting the range of politically viable policy farther and farther to the right, so much so that we're debating birth control. It's increasingly clear that we cannot and will not win unless we are bold, brave, and proactive. We at NLIRH have clarified our mission in the last year, committing ourselves in a big way to a multi-prong strategy-- * Proactive policy advocacy that puts our values in front; * Culture shift campaigns that build the world where these policies are possible; and * Good old-fashioned door-to-door, face-to-face organizing. …

While the term “reproductive justice” is relatively new to the field of health communication, the subject matter of reproductive justice has been taken up by many health communication researchers. Reproductive justice‐centered health communication research addresses the violent history of reproductive policy, the growing justice movements for marginalized reproduction, and the ever‐connected tension between public discourse and the private body. This entry defines the shift from reproductive rights to reproductive justice and provides an overview of health communication research surrounding reproductive justice in a critical context, an interpersonal context, and the future directions of reproductive health communication.