Week 10
policing the womb
Key Questions
What is reproductive justice? How does it offer a holistic framework for understanding the context in which reproduction occurs?
How has reproduction been historically criminalized and regulated? In what ways has this been racialized?
How have people resisted the criminalization and regulation of reproduction?
Required Materials:
Loretta Ross and Rickie Solinger, Reproductive Justice: An Introduction, “A Reproductive Justice History”
Becca Andrews, “When Choice Is 221 Miles Away: The Nightmare of Getting an Abortion in the South”
Molly Schwartz, “Do We Need to Abolish Child Protective Services?”
Supplementary Materials:
Jenny Brown, Without Apology: The Abortion Struggle Now, “History”
Jeanne Flavin and Lynn Paltrow, “’Do No Harm’ Like You Mean It: Hospital Workers’ Role in the Policing of Pregnant Women”
Andrea Ritchie, Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, “Policing Motherhood”
Dorothy Roberts, “Abolishing Policing Also Means Abolishing Family Regulation”
Dorothy Roberts, “Prison, Foster Care, and the Systemic Punishment of Black Mothers”
Erin Miles Cloud, “Toward the Abolition of the Foster Care System”
Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law, Prison By Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms, “Policing Parenthood”
Michelle Goodwin, Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood, “Pregnancy and State Power: Prosecuting Fetal Endangerment”
Michelle Goodwin, Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood, “Creeping Criminalization of Pregnancy Across the United States”
Dorothy Roberts, “I Have Studied Child Protective Services for Decades. It Needs to Be Abolished.”
Melissa Upreti, Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-Industrial Complex, “Reproductive Rights in Nepal: From Criminalization to Resistance”
Interrupting Criminalization, “Abortion Decriminalization Is Part of the Larger Struggle Against Policing and Criminalization”
Movimento Di Lotta Femminile Di Padova, "The Problem Is Not Abortion"
Melissa Gira Grant, “The Criminalization of Pregnancy”
exercise
The Supreme Court heard arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization at the end of 2021 and a decision is expected in the summer of 2022. If the court rules to overturn or severely limit Roe v. Wade, abortion is likely to be banned in at least 26 states. Besides legal intervention, what steps could be taken to ensure that people continue to have access to abortions? What would an abolitionist pro-abortion agenda look like?