Regulating reproduction,reproducing control: Feminist theory and the carceral continuum

Abstract

This study examines how reproductive autonomy is shaped across interconnected systems that structure criminalization and access to care, including the periods leading up to incarceration, during custody, and after release. While feminist scholarship has documented reproductive oppression inside jails and prisons, less is known about how control over reproductive life is organized across the broader institutional landscape that surrounds them. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with ten formerly incarcerated adults in California, this article traces how reproductive health care is disrupted, rationed, and reconfigured across time and settings. Participants described four linked patterns: early neglect in reproductive and menstrual care, intensified reproductive denial and control while incarcerated, institutional abandonment at the point of reentry, and ongoing exclusion from reproductive and sexual health services after release. These themes show incarceration functioning not only as a discrete episode of confinement but also as one site within a wider system of reproductive regulation structured by racialized surveillance, gendered discipline, and structural abandonment. The article advances feminist theory by framing reproductive control as a core mechanism of carceral power and by grounding debates about embodiment, autonomy, and state regulation in the lived experiences of people who have been incarcerated. It also examines the limits of reform, arguing that reproductive justice cannot be secured through improved services within punitive systems and instead requires forms of care and support that are not organized through punishment or control.