Introduction: Reproductive Justice

Abstract

This article introduces the four manuscripts for this special issue of CS/CM. The order of the articles is the same as the introduction: Planned Parenthood Before and After Roe: Historical Lessons for the Current Fight, Relocating Reproductive Justice in Donor Sperm and Egg Capitalism, Let’s Make the Womb Safe Again, and Everyday Practices, Unaffordable Rights, Radical Liberation.

In the spring of 2022, a leaked memo from an anonymous source connected to a justice on the Supreme Court revealed that justice’s potential arguments for overturning Roe v. Wade. From the moment Donald J. Trump won the White House in 2016, the spectre of losing this hard fought for constitutional right loomed. When justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg died in the fall of 2020, she was quickly replaced by Trump and his Republican allies with a hard right, anti-abortion justice, Amy Coney-Barrett, just a few weeks before the general election and while early voting was underway. No matter who won the election, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. or Donald J. Trump, the die was cast: the now 6 to 3 “forced birth” majority would rule on Mississippi’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization with little doubt that, despite the three Trump nominees’ declarations that Roe was settled law, Roe would be overturned. The leaked memo brought home this impending threat; it was long past time to act. Reproductive justice activists and practitioners had long fought the incremental legislative slashings to Roe while still making advancements in reproductive care. Safe and easily accessed chemical abortions were now over 50% of all legal abortions nationwide; still, reproductive justice advocates had missed the train—Roe would be overturned under egregious and archaic legal rationales and women (and individuals with a uterus) in as many as half the states of the United States would once again be subject to bodily and economic harm.

Since the overturning of Roe, many states, including red states, have passed referendum to codify aspects of Roe in their states’ constitutions, battling the hard right’s sketchy legal wranglings and punitive policies each step of the way. The American public has also awakened to this perennial threat that many of us who grew up under the aegis of Roe did not, our mothers who did, and our daughters who now face this return to a dangerous past. Many now understand that the Supreme Court aims to reduce Americans’ constitutional rights. Dobbs is just the beginning.

As an academic whose mother helped me access a safe and legal abortion when I was in my early 20s, my outrage led me to write an autoethnography, “Mother’s Eyes” (2022), about my own abortion. The New York Times and other mainstream news outlets have asked women (and people with wombs) to share their stories and yes many have, leading the country to a much better understanding of the need for safe and legal abortions in all and every circumstance when the fetus cannot live on its own. Still, sharing stories is not enough and as activists took to the streets and courts, as doctors fled oppressive states to preserve their own livelihood, and liberal states, such as my own Illinois, expanded access to abortion for travelers from other states, I along with the editors of Cultural Studies/Cultural Methodologies released a call for papers that addressed these and many other concerns resulting from this radical change in our domestic landscape. The manuscripts included in this special issue address a myriad of nuanced concerns relating to the challenges reproductive justice activists face. Certainly, the papers do not address all aspects of this situation, but they aim, individually and collectively, to showcase the impacts this decisionalong with the pernicious path leading to it has on women, women of color, people with wombs, and their families and communities at large. The papers presented here are drawn from personal experience and work with a variety of methodological approaches: historical analysis, anecdotal experiences framed through a critical cultural lens, feminist, ethnographic interviewing methods, and autoethnography to create a body of work that is personal and political.

The authors of these essays pull numerous perspectives and facets within reproductive rights and share a deep analysis of what it means to have reproductive justice in a post-Roe world. Most commonly associated with reproductive justice is the controversy over abortion. Some solely believe abortion is reproductive justice, and that it is nothing else. This is false. Reproductive justice fights for contraceptive rights, fertility rights (such as in vitro fertilization [IVF] and sperm/egg donors), prenatal aid, family planning, sex education, easy access to health services, abortion services, and more. It advocates and fights for the safety and opportunity of all individuals (not just women and girls) to get the support and aid they need. This compilation of essays addresses the issues of contemporary abortion legislation after the overturning of Roe vs. Wade; the difficulties of artificial reproductive treatments (ARTs), such as sperm and egg donations and IVF; the intersectionality of gender, race, class, and abortion; and the everyday realities of reproductive justice, and offers a look into the anti-choice movement sharing a perspective from the “other side.” Together, these authors reveal the vastness of issues and concerns that appear in the reproductive justice moment.

We begin with Robyn L. Rosen and Jessica Furgerson’s historical overview of Planned Parenthood in “Planned Parenthood Before and After Roe: Historical Lessons for the Current Fight,” which follows the establishment and growth of Planned Parenthood from its infancy in the 1920s to its current role in the center of the Reproductive Justice Movement. This paper explores the liberalization and political shift from a family planning clinic to a national pro-abortion, all-forms-of-reproductive-support organization. Rosen and Furgerson track the complex relationship Planned Parenthood has had with the Catholic Church as well as with the federal government’s political agenda. Through their analysis of the various and shifting views on birth control, the global issue of overpopulation and population control, and second-wave feminism, the authors show us that our current reproductive climate (access, methods, and attitudes) has not always been the staple mindset. In doing so, the paper showcases the tensions that arise from being an organization that provides health care while also advocating for reproductive rights, all under the scrutiny of oppositional forces. We are reminded that history is crucial in understanding the current climate around reproductive rights and abortion and for moving forward in the struggle for reproductive justice.

In “Relocating Reproductive Justice in Donor Sperm and Egg Capitalism,” Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre and Stacey K. Sowards ask us to extend our understanding of reproductive justice to realms not normally considered: assistive reproductive technologies and in vitro fertility treatments (ART/IVF). Through thoughtful and reflective anecdotal experiences, Schwartz-DuPre and Sowards provide an in-depth review of reproductive justice as a move away from choice rhetoric that provides a framework on systemic inequalities of a racialized, neoliberal approach to ART/IVF, widening the scope of reproductive justice beyond abortion. The authors argue that assisted reproductive technologies pre- and post-Dobbs frame the politics of “fetal personhood,” eugenics, heteronormity, and intersectional inequalities. Drawing from intertwined and balanced anecdotes, the paper opens our understanding of how the threats to reproductive freedom and autonomy affect a diversity of people and family units. By identifying the intersectionality of race and reproductive care, Schwartz-DePre and Sowards foreground the racial issues within the reproductive justice movement itself and what needs to change.

Micki Burdick’s ethnography “Let’s Make the Womb Safe Again: Ethnographic Explorations of White Evangelical Women’s Language of Reproductive Injustice” offers us an unusual perspective on abortion and the reproductive justice movement, by revealing a nuanced view into the “racist scripts” of the “pro-life” movement from the perspectives of those involved in that movement. Burdick grew up in the “pro-life” movement; hence, her on-the-ground credibility resonates with the interviews and anecdotes she shares from her ethnographic approach to reproductive justice. The voices we read remind us of how deeply felt, despite the known contradictions, the attachment to fetal life is for “pro-life” advocates. Hence, this article offers something we are not often able to witness: the mindset behind the movement. While normally we witness the actions behind these thoughts, we have little insight into their origins, which is speculation at best and confirmation bias at worst. By revealing and critically challenging this opposing perspective, Burdick exposes us to “the other half” of abortion rights, allowing a glimpse into what the other side may be thinking. Fortified with this information, we can challenge it with our own voices that speak to the opposition and not over or under it. Thus, maybe progress can be made.

We conclude this special issue of reproductive justice with an autoethnography by Jessica Gantt-Shafer, who works actively in the trenches of helping women access safe and legal abortions. “Everyday Practices, Unaffordable Rights, Radical Liberation: Reproductive Justice Direct Service Activism” presents an on-the-ground take on the realities of reproductive health care and abortion access. Gantt-Shafer’s paper offers a powerful look into the everyday practices of activism in the reproductive justice movement, expanding our understanding of the groundwork necessary for the movement to impact the people and communities affected by the assaults on their reproductive freedoms and autonomies. As an autoethnography, the paper bridges voice and experience, identifying the intersectionality and clashes between reproductive justice, social norms versus social change, individuals versus the government, and finally, self. This paper helps us dissect abortion from numerous lenses, painting a picture of the trials and realities of abortion access in the United States.

I wish to thank the authors for their patience and forebearance as preparation for this special issue has taken more than the usual time. Nevertheless, the papers here are relevant today and into our future. I also wish to thank my assistant Amelia Dolly, an undergraduate student whom I met while substitute teaching for one of my teaching assistants. When I introduced myself to the class and mentioned I was working on this project, she indicated her desire to help. How could I turn down a young person who is directly impacted by this egregious assault on reproductive freedom and justice? Who very soon will be leading the charge against the forced birth crowd? Who will create a better nation, a fairer and more just nation for herself and her generation and those beyond? In helping me prepare this issue, Amelia brought deep insights and critical perspectives to each of the papers and helped shape their collective argument for critical engagement with the past, present, and future. I thank Amelia, the authors, the editors, and all the reproductive justice activists who continue this work. This fight is not over. We did not lose. We just haven’t won yet.