Intersections at the Border: Immigration Enforcement, Reproductive Oppression, and the Policing of Latina Bodies in the Rio Grande Valley

Abstract

INTRODUCTION A series of events in 2014 brought significant attention to the United States-Mexico border. Over the summer, reports of an influx of undocumented Central American immigrants began circulating. (1) Though most coverage mentioned only children crossing the border, many of these young migrants traveled alongside their mothers. (2) Reports of this influx raised public awareness about the increased level of immigration enforcement at the border and the rise of federal family detention centers in the American southwest. That same year, a series of lawsuits against the State of Texas's House Bill 2, which implemented significant restrictions on reproductive health clinics and abortion services in the state, shone a light on the health crisis facing women in the Rio Grande Valley. (3) Though seemingly unrelated--and often treated as such by both government and media--these circumstances have had inter-related results, particularly for Latina women in south Texas communities. Scholars have long understood immigration enforcement as a mechanism of racial control (4) and reproductive oppression as a tool of gender subordination. (5) Yet Latino/a rights and mainstream reproductive rights organizations have historically failed to address the way these mechanisms operate together to police immigrant Latina women. (6) Through an intersectional framework, this Note examines the outcomes of two coexistent and interrelated systems in the Rio Grande Valley and illuminates the racial control dynamics of State anti-abortion policies as well as the doctrinal shortcomings of abortion jurisprudence in providing remedies for marginalized women. Although a vast body of work has addressed the intersectional dynamics of reproductive oppression and racial control, (7) most of this work looks at oppressive forces of state policies related to reproduction outside of the abortion context or at the negative outcomes of advocates' narrow focus on abortion rights. There is a historical reason for this: activists and academics concerned about the marginalization of women of color sought to address the various reproductive oppressions experienced by Black, Latina, Asian, and Native American women that have been largely neglected by the mainstream (mostly white) feminist/pro-choice movement. (8) Women at society's margins have faced forced sterilizations, (9) lack of access to culturally sensitive birthing care, (10) family caps on welfare benefits, (11) and the criminalization of miscarriages, (12) among other infringements of bodily and reproductive autonomy. (13) The American healthcare, welfare, and prison systems still frequently and pervasively deploy similar tactics. (14) By focusing on anti-abortion legislation in this Note, I do not mean to suggest that the reproductive freedom (15) movement should prioritize abortion access--or "choice"--over these other violations of reproductive autonomy. Nor do I mean to suggest that abortion should continue to be held at the forefront of conversations surrounding reproductive freedom, rights, and justice. (16) Rather, I focus on anti-abortion measures here because advocates on both sides are currently waging battles over autonomous reproductive control couched in the language of abortion. (17) Furthermore, much of the academic work discussing abortion and abortion jurisprudence has failed to address the racial control dynamics of anti-abortion policies, the ways in which anti-abortion policies work alongside other subordinating structures and government forces to police race, and the negative impact these disciplining mechanisms have on women who are either not pregnant or who are and wish to carry to term. (18) A long history of progressive advocates marginalizing both Latina women and their reproductive health needs have contributed to what Professor Kimberle Crenshaw calls "conditions of possibility." Disregard for the needs of women of color within these social movements, coupled with pervasive social stigma associated with reproductive healthcare, has rendered women of color especially susceptible to this particular form of contemporary, state-imposed gender and racial oppression. …