(M)Others in Altered States: Prenatal Drug-Use, Risk, Choice, and Responsible Self-Governance

Abstract

The purpose of this article is four-fold. Firstly, it is meant to draw attention to Project Prevention, an American-based program funded largely by private donations used to offer people — mostly poor, racialized, drug-using women — up to $200 for limiting their reproductive abilities. Secondly, it highlights links between Project Prevention’s mandate and prevailing discriminatory scientific-medical, legal, political, and media discourses which serve to constitute certain ‘Truths’ about the dangers of prenatal drug-use and parenthood, particularly for women. Thirdly, Project Prevention is framed and theorized within its neo-liberal context in order to underscore the ways that contemporary (pregnant) bodies often become governed through social initiatives which implode state/non-state agencies, public/private distinctions. Finally, to ensure readers are not left with overly simplistic readings of the issues at hand, the article concludes by considering the potential role of counterclaims in terms of who does and does not get constructed as a ‘risky’ reproductive agent.