reproductive rights thesis statement

10 Essential Essays About Women’s Reproductive Rights

“Reproductive rights” let a person decide whether they want to have children, use contraception, or terminate a pregnancy. Reproductive rights also include access to sex education and reproductive health services. Throughout history, the reproductive rights of women in particular have been restricted. Girls and women today still face significant challenges. In places that have seen reproductive rights expand, protections are rolling back. Here are ten essential essays about reproductive rights:

“Our Bodies, Ourselves: Reproductive Rights”

bell hooks Published in Feminism Is For Everyone (2014)

This essay opens strong: when the modern feminism movement started, the most important issues were the ones linked to highly-educated and privileged white women. The sexual revolution led the way, with “free love” as shorthand for having as much sex as someone wanted with whoever they wanted. This naturally led to the issue of unwanted pregnancies. Birth control and abortions were needed.

Sexual freedom isn’t possible without access to safe, effective birth control and the right to safe, legal abortion. However, other reproductive rights like prenatal care and sex education were not as promoted due to class bias. Including these other rights more prominently might have, in hooks’ words, “galvanized the masses.” The right to abortion in particular drew the focus of mass media. Including other reproductive issues would mean a full reckoning about gender and women’s bodies. The media wasn’t (and arguably still isn’t) ready for that.

“Racism, Birth Control, and Reproductive Rights”

Angela Davis Published in Women, Race, & Class (1981)

Davis’ essay covers the birth control movement in detail, including its race-based history. Davis argues that birth control always included racism due to the belief that poor women (specifically poor Black and immigrant women) had a “moral obligation” to birth fewer children. Race was also part of the movement from the beginning because only wealthy white women could achieve the goals (like more economic and political freedom) driving access to birth control.

In light of this history, Davis emphasizes that the fight for reproductive freedom hasn’t led to equal victories. In fact, the movements driving the gains women achieved actively neglected racial inequality. One clear example is how reproductive rights groups ignored forced sterilization within communities of color. Davis ends her essay with a call to end sterilization abuse.

“Reproductive Justice, Not Just Rights”

Dorothy Roberts Published in Dissent Magazine (2015)

Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body and Fatal Invention , describes attending the March for Women’s Lives. She was especially happy to be there because co-sponsor SisterSong (a collective founded by 16 organizations led by women of color) shifted the focus from “choice” to “social justice.” Why does this matter? Roberts argues that the rhetoric of “choice” favors women who have options that aren’t available to low-income women, especially women of color. Conservatives face criticism for their stance on reproductive rights, but liberals also cause harm when they frame birth control as the solution to global “overpopulation” or lean on fetal anomalies as an argument for abortion choice.

Instead of “the right to choose,” a reproductive justice framework is necessary. This requires a living wage, universal healthcare, and prison abolition. Reproductive justice goes beyond the current pro-choice/anti-choice rhetoric that still favors the privileged.

“The Color of Choice: White Supremacy and Reproductive Justice”

Loretta J. Ross, SisterSong Published in Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology (2016)

White supremacy in the United States has always created different outcomes for its ethnic populations. The method? Population control. Ross points out that even a glance at reproductive politics in the headlines makes it clear that some women are encouraged to have more children while others are discouraged. Ross defines “reproductive justice,” which goes beyond the concept of “rights.” Reproductive justice is when reproductive rights are “embedded in a human rights and social justice framework.”

In the essay, Ross explores topics like white supremacy and population control on both the right and left sides of politics. She acknowledges that while the right is often blunter in restricting women of color and their fertility, white supremacy is embedded in both political aisles. The essay closes with a section on mobilizing for reproductive justice, describing SisterSong (where Ross is a founding member) and the March for Women’s Lives in 2004.

“Abortion Care Is Not Just For Cis Women”

Sachiko Ragosta Published in Ms. Magazine (2021)

Cisgender women are the focus of abortion and reproductive health services even though nonbinary and trans people access these services all the time. In their essay, Ragosta describes the criticism Ibis Reproductive Health received when it used the term “pregnant people.” The term alienates women, the critics said, but acting as if only cis women need reproductive care is simply inaccurate. As Ragosta writes, no one is denying that cis women experience pregnancy. The reaction to more inclusive language around pregnancy and abortion reveals a clear bias against trans people.

Normalizing terms like “pregnant people” help spaces become more inclusive, whether it’s in research, medical offices, or in day-to-day life. Inclusiveness leads to better health outcomes, which is essential considering the barriers nonbinary and gender-expansive people face in general and sexual/reproductive care.

“We Cannot Leave Black Women, Trans People, and Gender Expansive People Behind: Why We Need Reproductive Justice”

Karla Mendez Published in Black Women Radicals

Mendez, a freelance writer and (and the time of the essay’s publication) a student studying Interdisciplinary Studies, Political Science, and Women’s and Gender Studies, responds to the Texas abortion ban. Terms like “reproductive rights” and “abortion rights” are part of the mainstream white feminist movement, but the benefits of birth control and abortions are not equal. Also, as the Texas ban shows, these benefits are not secure. In the face of this reality, it’s essential to center Black people of all genders.

In her essay, Mendez describes recent restrictive legislation and the failure of the reproductive rights movement to address anti-Blackness, transphobia, food insecurity, and more. Groups like SisterSong have led the way on reproductive justice. As reproductive rights are eroded in the United States, the reproductive rights movement needs to focus on justice.

“Gee’s Bend: A Reproductive Justice Quilt Story From the South”

Mary Lee Bendolph Published in Radical Reproductive Justice (2017)

One of Mary Lee Bendolph’s quilt designs appears as the cover of Radical Reproductive Justice. She was one of the most important strip quilters associated with Gee’s Bend, Alabama. During the Civil Rights era, the 700 residents of Gee’s Bend were isolated and found it hard to vote or gain educational and economic power outside the village. Bendolph’s work didn’t become well-known outside her town until the mid-1990s.

Through an interview by the Souls Grown Foundation, we learn that Bendolph didn’t receive any sex education as a girl. When she became pregnant in sixth grade, she had to stop attending school. “They say it was against the law for a lady to go to school and be pregnant,” she said, because it would influence the other kids. “Soon as you have a baby, you couldn’t never go to school again.”

“Underground Activists in Brazil Fight for Women’s Reproductive Rights”

Alejandra Marks Published in The North American Congress on Latin America (2021)

While short, this essay provides a good introduction to abortion activism in Brazil, where abortion is legal only in the case of rape, fetal anencephaly, or when a woman’s life is at risk. The reader meets “Taís,” a single mother faced with an unwanted pregnancy. With no legal options, she researched methods online, including teas and pills. She eventually connected with a lawyer and activist who walked her through using Cytotec, a medication she got online. The activist stayed on the phone while Taís completed her abortion at home.

For decades, Latin American activists have helped pregnant people get abortion medications while wealthy Brazilians enter private clinics or travel to other countries. Government intimidation makes activism risky, but the stakes are high. Hundreds of Brazilians die each year from dangerous abortion methods. In the past decade, religious conservatives in Congress have blocked even mild reform. Even if a new president is elected, Brazil’s abortion rights movement will fight an uphill battle.

“The Ambivalent Activist”

Lauren Groff Published in Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 years of Landmark ACLU Cases (2020)

Before Roe v. Wade, abortion regulation around the country was spotty. 37 states still had near-bans on the procedure while only four states had repealed anti-abortion laws completely. In her essay, Groff summarizes the case in accessible, engaging prose. The “Jane Roe” of the case was Norma McCorvey. When she got pregnant, she’d already had two children, one of whom she’d given up for adoption. McCorvey couldn’t access an abortion provider because the pregnancy didn’t endanger her life. She eventually connected with two attorneys: Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. In 1973 on January 2, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that abortion was a fundamental right.

Norma McCorvey was a complicated woman. She later became an anti-choice activist (in an interview released after her death, she said Evangelical anti-choice groups paid her to switch her position), but as Groff writes, McCorvey had once been proud that it was her case that gave women bodily autonomy.

“The Abortion I Didn’t Want”

Caitlin McDonnell Published in Salon (2015) and Choice Words: Writers on Abortion (2020)

While talking about abortion is less demonized than in the past, it’s still fairly unusual to hear directly from people who’ve experienced it. It’s certainly unusual to hear more complicated stories. Caitlin McDonnell, a poet and teacher from Brooklyn, shares her experience. In clear, raw prose, this piece brings home what can be an abstract “issue” for people who haven’t experienced it or been close to someone who has.

In debates about abortion rights, those who carry the physical and emotional effects are often neglected. Their complicated feelings are weaponized to serve agendas or make judgments about others. It’s important to read essays like McDonnell’s and hear stories as nuanced and multi-faceted as humans themselves.

You may also like

16 Inspiring Civil Rights Leaders You Should Know

15 Trusted Charities Fighting for Housing Rights

15 Examples of Gender Inequality in Everyday Life

11 Approaches to Alleviate World Hunger 

15 Facts About Malala Yousafzai

12 Ways Poverty Affects Society

15 Great Charities to Donate to in 2024

15 Quotes Exposing Injustice in Society

14 Trusted Charities Helping Civilians in Palestine

The Great Migration: History, Causes and Facts

Social Change 101: Meaning, Examples, Learning Opportunities

Rosa Parks: Biography, Quotes, Impact

About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

Statement: Reproductive rights are women’s rights and human rights

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to LinkedIn
• Share to E-mail

Reproductive rights are integral to women’s rights, a fact that is upheld by international agreements and reflected in law in different parts of the world.

To be able to exercise their human rights and make essential decisions, women need to be able to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children and to have access to information, education, and services.

When safe and legal access to abortion is restricted, women are forced to resort to less-safe methods, too often with damaging or disastrous results—especially for women who are affected by poverty or marginalization, including minority women.

The ability of women to control what happens to their own bodies is also associated with the roles women are able to play in society, whether as a member of the family, the workforce, or government.

UN Women remains steadfast in our determination to ensure that the rights of women and girls are fully observed and enjoyed worldwide, and we look forward to continued evidence-based engagement with our partners everywhere in support of rapid progress towards universal enjoyment of universal rights.

• Sexual and reproductive health and rights
• Women’s rights
• Human rights

Related content

Statement by principals of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee on the Democratic Republic of the Congo – Crushing levels of violence, displacement fuel unprecedented civilian suffering

Six months into the war on Gaza, over 10,000 women have been killed, among them an estimated 6,000 mothers, leaving 19,000 children orphaned

Speech: Gender equality – just, prudent, and essential for everything we all aspire to

Women's & Gender Studies

• Florida Women
• Image Resources
• Women in Literature
• Quotations and Speeches
• Articles, Databases and Other Resources
• LGBTQI Resources
• Proseminar Course Guide
• Masculinities and Men's Studies
• Open Access Information
• Feminism and Food
• Reproductive Rights in the US
• Sexual Violence and Abuse
• Women in Politics
• Women in Sports
• Women and the LGBT Community in the Military
• Gender Issues in STEM
• Social Movements
• Feminist Science Fiction
• Gender and Journalism
• Women's March
• Women and Gender in Comics and Graphic Novels
• Women in Television and Film
• Commemorating the 19th Amendment - Women's Right to Vote
• Girlhood Studies
• Betty Friedan - The Feminine Mystique at 50
• Simone de Beauvoir
• Isabel Briggs Myers
• Mary Wollstonecraft
• Feminist AI and Big Data
• Gender & Feminist Perspectives on Dolls, Games, Toys and Play

Featured Books

Selected Documentaries

Summary: A documentary on the efforts to legalize abortion in the United States and on the social and medical dangers of illegal abortions prior to Roe vs Wade. UF LIBRARY WEST DVD (2nd Floor) DVD 720

Selected Websites

A bortion Information Series on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights 2020 (UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissione)

Abortion Law Global Comparisons - Council on Foreign Relations

Abortion Policies and Reproductive Health Around the World (United Nations)

Birthing Reproductive Justice: 150 Years of Images and Ideas 

Center for Reproductive Rights

Guttmacher Institute: Advancing sexual and reproductive health worldwide through research, policy analysis and public education - See also:  https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/counseling-and-waiting-periods-abortion

The History of Reproductive Rights: A Syllabus

If/When/How

NARAL Pro-Choice America Who Decides? The Status of Women's Reproductive Rights in the United States

National Abortion Federation

NOW and Abortion RIghts/ Reproductive Justice

Reproductive Health Data and Statistics : Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective

• << Previous: Feminism and Food
• Next: Sexual Violence and Abuse >>
• Last Updated: Mar 22, 2024 12:56 PM
• URL: https://guides.uflib.ufl.edu/womensandgenderstudies

• Search Menu
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Urban Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Emotions
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Language Acquisition
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Culture
• Music and Religion
• Music and Media
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Society
• Law and Politics
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Oncology
• Medical Toxicology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Medical Ethics
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Games
• Computer Security
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business History
• Business Strategy
• Business Ethics
• Business and Government
• Business and Technology
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Systems
• Economic History
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Theory
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Politics and Law
• Public Administration
• Public Policy
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Developmental and Physical Disabilities Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous chapter
• Next chapter >

8 Reproductive Rights

Véronique Mottier is Fellow and Director of Studies in Social and Political Sciences at Jesus College, Cambridge (UK), and part-time professor in Sociology at the University of Lausanne.

• Published: 01 August 2013
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

This article discusses feminist scholarship on three specific areas of the politics of reproduction. It first defines the concept of reproduction as the production of offspring; reproduction is also considered as a key theme of feminist theory and political practice before and after Simone de Beauvoir. The article then studies state control over the procreative choices of the citizens, specifically the eugenic population policies introduced during the first few decades of the twentieth century. The next section focuses on feminist mobilization around abortion and contraceptive rights and outlines the ways reproductive rights have been included in the political arena due to women’s movements. The article concludes with a study of the impact of the latest reproductive technologies on modern politics of gender along with the feminist responses to the challenges posed by recent improvements in this area.

Introduction

Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex , first published in 1949, famously blamed women’s reproductive bodies and activities for their subordinate social status. Writing at a time when marriage and motherhood constituted the main horizon of female social respectability, de Beauvoir portrayed marriage, housework, and childcare as mutually reinforcing women’s dependence on men. The author reserved some of her most radical language for describing the strong emotional ties linking a mother to her child as “a mutual and harmful oppression” (1976b, 389) and the fetus as “both part of her body, and a parasite which exploits her” (1976b, 349). Echoing the trope of “voluntary motherhood” promoted by earlier, first-wave women’s movements, de Beauvoir called for free access to birth control and abortion as well as collective methods of childrearing.

Reproduction, understood as the production of offspring, has constituted a key theme of feminist theory and political practice both before and after de Beauvoir. Three features of reproduction explain its importance to feminist theory and praxis. First, reproduction is conventionally considered a “women’s domain.” Second, and consequently, as de Beauvoir and numerous other feminist pioneers have decried, normative femininity remains to a considerable extent defined in relation to reproduction and motherhood. And third, the fact that reproduction involves the engendering of future generations turns it into an object of collective interest and anxiety. In an influential edited volume exploring the global politics of reproduction, Ginsburg and Rapp ( 1995 ) accordingly argue that, given its social importance, reproduction should be placed at the center not just of feminist theory but of social theory more generally.

Reproduction has been central to a great number of the political struggles of first- and second-wave women’s movements, ranging from collective mobilizations around access to contraception, abortion, and childcare to controversies triggered by developments in the field of new reproductive technologies. In the context of such struggles, a new vocabulary of reproductive rights, reproductive health, and reproductive justice has emerged in recent decades and has acquired institutional anchoring through national and international legislation. At an international level, “reproductive rights” were first recognised as a subset of basic human rights in the (non-legally binding) “Proclamation of Tehran” of the United Nations (UN) International Conference on Human Rights in 1968, where it was stated that parents should have the right “to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children” (para.16). The (also non-binding) “Cairo Programme of Action” adopted at the UN International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 contained the first UN definition of reproductive health, including individuals’ right to “have a satisfying and safe sex life and…the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so” (para.7.2)—notions that were further broadened at the UN 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Indeed, the Beijing Platform for Action stated that women’s reproductive rights, part of universal and inalienable human rights, required “equal relationships between women and men in matters of sexual relations and reproduction” (para.96).

However, the notion of reproductive rights has also deeply divided global feminist theory and practice. Western feminists’ calls for access to abortion have been criticized for being a “luxury” concern of privileged women by activists from those developing nations where women have been subjected to coerced sterilization or forced abortion. This has, in turn, led to semantic disagreements over whether reproductive freedom signifies the freedom not to procreate or the freedom to have children when wanted. Feminists have been further divided over whether female sexual freedom or the protection against practices of female and male genital mutilation should be included in notions of reproductive health and whether such inclusion constitutes a feminist gain, or another expression of Western ethnocentrism. Finally, the promotion of reproductive rights has been criticized as meaningless unless a number of social conditions are met. Provisions such as legalized abortion and contraceptives are accessible only to those who have sufficient economic resources to be able to afford them, while practices of coercion, gender violence, and racial discrimination may impede women from freely exercising such rights. As Dorothy Roberts ( 1997 ) argues, the narrow focus on abortion rights reflects the concerns of white, middle-class women about legal restraints on choices that are otherwise available to them. Integrating the particular concerns of black women, Roberts points out, “helps to expand our vision of reproductive freedom to include the full scope of what it means to have reproductive control over one’s life” (300).

Such critical debates have led to the emergence of the concept of reproductive justice , coined by the American Black Women’s Caucus in the wake of the 1994 Cairo conference. This concept problematizes the gap between legal rights and the actual usage of such rights and links reproductive rights with social justice. It thus shifts the focus from an individualist rights-based perspective to a concern with collective structures of reproductive oppression. The frame of reproductive justice has been promoted by grassroots organizations both in the United States, such as SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective (founded in 1997), and its member organization Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, and elsewhere, most prominently by the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights, an influential worldwide organisation founded in the Netherlands in 1984 and currently based in Manila.

Against this backdrop, the next sections of this chapter will explore feminist scholarship on three areas of the politics of reproduction, using different periodizations for each of the subsections.The first section adopts primarily a top-down perspective to examine state control over citizens’ procreative choices, taking eugenic population policies during the early decades of the twentieth century as a specific example. The second section adopts a bottom-up perspective, centering on feminist mobilizations around abortion and contraceptive rights from the 1970s onward. It will trace the ways reproductive rights have been pushed into the political arena by women’s movements and how feminist activism has in turn been prompted, as well as strengthened, by struggles over access to safe abortion and means of birth control. The third section of the chapter examines the impact of new reproductive technologies on contemporary politics of gender and explores feminist responses to the challenges posed by recent developments in this area.

State Control and Reproductive Agency

The modern state intervenes in citizens’ reproductive lives and bodies in many different policy arenas, ranging from public health systems, sex education in schools, and abortion and adoption laws to population policies and natalist political rhetoric. The policy frames used in these arenas articulate ways of thinking about gender and reproductive agency, which are both reflective of modern forms of state intervention and colored by specific cultural, religious, or political contexts. In policy making, public debate, and everyday life interactions, it is tacitly taken for granted that “it’s women who have children.” Public anxieties about under-age sex, single parenthood, or new reproductive technologies tend to center on women and their reproductive behaviors, despite the increased usage of degendered language to do so. Male reproductive agency thus often remains a discursive blind spot, not just within public understandings of reproduction but also within feminist theorizations of gender and reproduction.

In stark contrast, the ancient Greek dramatic trilogy Oresteia , written by Aeschylus, offers a telling illustration of how different past understandings of gender and reproductive agency were, even within Western culture. The plays were first performed at the Dionysia festival in Athens in 458 BCE, where they won first prize. The only trilogy of ancient Greek plays to have survived until modern times, the Oresteia tells us the tragic myth of the cursed House of Atreus. In its first play, we witness queen Clytemnestra as she awaits the return of her husband Agamemnon, King of Argos, from the Trojan war after ten years of absence. The public learns that she nurtures deep hatred for her husband, whom she blames for the death of their daughter Iphigeneia. Indeed, at the start of the war, Agamemnon had prepared the sacrifice of their daughter in an attempt to placate the gods, who had sent him unfavorable winds preventing his war ships from sailing to Troy. In the course of the preparations for her death by her father, Iphigeneia, seemingly driven by the patriotic desire to allow the Greek ships to sail or, following an alternative reading, motivated by the fear that the noblewomen of Argos would end up as victims of rape by the men of Troy if Greece were defeated, ends up sacrificing her own life. Agamemnon doesn’t help matters by bringing back a souvenir from Troy: the exotic Trojan princess Cassandra, whom he has made his concubine. In a climactic, bloody scene, Clytemnestra and her lover murder Agamemnon and Cassandra, using an axe. Clytemnestra’s son Orestes now faces a dilemma: he has the moral obligation to revenge the murder of his father. However, he can do so only by killing his own mother, and matricide and patricide are seen as particularly “abhorrent to the gods” in ancient Greek culture. Despite these qualms, Orestes does kill Clytemnestra and in punishment is persecuted by the Furies (deities who revenge matricide or patricide). Driven to distraction by the Furies, Orestes flees to Athens, where a trial is called to decide whether his punishment should continue or not. At the trial, the male god of reason Apollo takes Orestes’s side against the Furies, and the female, celibate, virgin god of war and wisdom Athena is left to cast the deciding vote. Athena, born out of her father Zeus’s thigh without any reproductive involvement of a mother, is convinced by Apollo’s argument that Clytemnestra, Orestes’s mother, is not really a blood relative of Orestes. Indeed, Apollo and Athena agree that Clytemnestra’s body was nothing more than a vessel for Orestes’s father’s sperm. Therefore, the gods conclude, Orestes’s blood relationship is to his father Agamemnon and not to his mother. This rhetorical twist, in turn, makes the murder of Clytemnestra morally acceptable because it is now (to borrow a modern term) an honor killing rather than a matricide.

Although the Oresteia narrates mythical events, it reflects prevalent views in Western antiquity in presenting the role of the mother in reproduction as only passive. Within a patriarchy that placed (free) men and fathers at the center of power relations within the family as well as wider society, parenthood was seen to be actively determined by male sperm, not by the female reproductive body. More generally, metaphors of female bodies as simple recipients or passive vessels for active male sperm survived well into early modern times within Western culture. To the contemporary eye, the Oresteia appears fascinating precisely because of its disconnection of reproduction from biology. Western modernity has developed contrary understandings of gender and procreative agency, conventionally portraying reproduction as primarily a “female business,” biologically tied to women’s bodies. In depicting a contrasting, distinctly male-centered view of reproduction, the Oresteia reminds us that reproduction and reproductive agency have been understood differently within different historical time periods or cultural contexts. In other words, it reminds us that reproduction is not a natural, biological, universal process but a culturally situated experience,—just as gender and sexuality are best understood as culturally constructed rather than natural, universal, biologically driven experiences.

In addition, the Oresteia also draws attention to other themes that have been of key interest to feminist political theory, such as the gendered body politics of citizenship. Through Cassandra’s fate, it illustrates the ways women’s bodies become sexual property of male victors of war and act as metaphors for national honor as the patriotic reading of Iphigeneia’s self-sacrifice suggests, whereas patriotism for male citizens is measured by their willingness to sacrifice their bodies in war. In the Trojan case, these twin dynamics were illustrated particularly sharply, since the Trojan War was aimed at retrieving a Greek nobleman’s wife who had eloped with a Trojan prince (adultery with a married woman being considered a more horrendous crime than rape within ancient Greece, given the risk to the woman’s husband of illegitimate offspring). Finally, Orestes’s story signals the shift from Argos’s system of blood revenge to a system of legal trial by jury in Athens. The trilogy thus locates the mythical origins of formal systems of justice in a dispute over gender and parenthood, thereby founding embryonic state institutions upon a gendered model of reproduction that privileges male rather than female reproductive agency.

Scandinavian feminist political scientists such as Helga Hernes ( 1987 ) and Birte Siim ( 1988 ) have explored the consequences of the gendered understanding of reproductive agency for modern views of the relationship between citizens and the state. As they point out, notions of citizenship have been deeply gendered from the moment when they started to emerge and formalize in modernity (see also the chapter by Siim in this volume). The affiliation of male citizens to both the state and the nation has been historically founded upon the model of the citizen-worker and the citizen-soldier, particularly focusing on their willingness to work and to sacrifice their bodies and their lives in war (which is of course why antimilitaristic objectors have been conventionally portrayed not just as cowardly but also as unpatriotic traitors toward the nation). In contrast, women’s affiliation to the national body passes via their reproductive agency: their duty toward the national collectivity is as citizen-mothers, generating and raising the children that will form the future nation (see also Eisenstein 1983 ). Indeed, Adrienne Rich observed in her influential book Of Woman Born (1976) that terms such as barren or childless are used to suggest illegitimate female identities, whereas no equivalent terms exist for nonfathers (xiii-xiv). The nation is biologically replaced through reproductive sexuality, which is tacitly coded as female. As Michel Foucault ( 1990 ) famously points out, the fact that the future of our species and more specifically that of the nation is formed by reproductive sexuality has turned the latter into an arena for collective anxiety and state intervention. What Foucault failed to recognize, or at least paid insufficient theoretical and empirical attention to, however, was the deeply gendered nature of collective concerns with citizens’ reproductive sexuality. Authors such as Nira Yuval-Davis ( 1997 ) and Joanne Nagel ( 2003 ) demonstrate that female reproductive sexuality historically became a particular focus of such concerns.

One of the most dramatic examples of direct intervention of the modern state on reproductive bodies and sexuality is offered by practices of coerced sterilization. For example, during its state of emergency (1975–1977), India engaged in a notorious family planning program that involved the coerced sterilization of thousands of men and women. In China, human rights activists routinely accuse the government of using coerced abortion and sterilization as part of its one-child policy program. First announced in 1978, the program constitutes a stark reversal of Chairman Mao’s earlier pronatalist stance and persecution of birth control activists in the 1950s and reflects a shift of party workers’ activism from production to reproduction since the 1980s (Anagnost 1995 ). Czechoslovakia undertook sterilization under constraints or rewarded with welfare payments of primarily Roma women in the period from 1973 to 2001.

From the late 1920s to the 1960s, several Western countries implemented coerced sterilization policies that were partly driven by eugenic concerns. Eugenics initially emerged in the late nineteenth century as a new and self-declared science, which identified the hereditary transmission of inferior physical and mental characteristics as sources of national degeneration and focused on how to encourage instead the transmission of superior qualities to the next generation. Eugenicists aimed to assist states in implementing social policies that would improve the quality of the national “breed.” In opposition to the laissez-faire of political liberalism, they advocated active social engineering and state intervention in the most private areas of citizens’ lives, including their reproductive sexuality. While some eugenic thinkers proposed so-called positive eugenic measures (such as eugenic education), defined as ways to encourage reproduction by those categories of the population who were deemed to be of superior quality, others promoted negative measures such as marriage bans or sterilization to prevent inferior citizens from having children. Political calls for coerced sterilization or castration to exclude unfit categories of the population from the (future) nation were thus legitimized through the authority of eugenic science, which rapidly established itself in the context of scientific disciplines such as biological anthropology, psychiatry, and sexology. Citizens had a patriotic duty, eugenic scientists argued, to contribute to the improvement of the nation through what was termed a conscious race-culture (Pearson 1909, 170). In France, the cofounder of the socialist French Workers’ Party, Georges Vacher de Lapouge (an anthropologist who had introduced eugenic ideas in France in the final decades of the nineteenth century), promoted the idea that male citizens should perform selectionist breeding as part of a sexual service to the nation, similar to their military service. The primary focus of eugenic thinkers, however, was on women’s reproductive agency, reflecting the wider association of reproduction with women’s bodies.

The eugenic concern with the improvement of the national race via the surveillance of citizens’ reproductive sexuality by the state generally emerged against the political backdrop of colonial rule (Levine 2010 ). In colonizing states such as the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, fears about the degeneracy of the national race were intertwined with anxieties about miscegenation with colonial others. In contexts such as Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries, however, eugenic policy practices developed within an entirely different political landscape. Switzerland was never a colonial state, while the Scandinavian countries no longer had colonies (with the partial exception of Denmark) by the time eugenics emerged. A collective preoccupation with the racial hygiene of the nation nevertheless also developed in these noncolonial states (Mottier 2010 ).

The rise of modern social policies in the course of the twentieth century offered the institutional conditions for translating eugenic ideas into practical policy making. In the United Kingdom, the strong influence of liberal political thought with its emphasis on individual rights and attendant distrust of state intervention in private life formed an ideological barrier against invasive eugenic practices. Parliamentary attempts to pass a sterilization law foundered in the 1930s due to political opposition from the Catholic Church and the labor movement, which judged the legislation to be antiworking class (King and Hansen 1999 ). Political conditions were more favorable elsewhere, especially in Protestant nations such as the United States, Germany, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries.

The emerging welfare state also added an important additional motive to the eugenic project of preventing degeneracy of the nation: limiting public expenditure. Indeed, the inferior categories of the national population were soon to become the main recipients of the expanding welfare institutions. Sterilization of indigent single mothers came to be promoted on the grounds that it was cheaper for the state than long-term financial support. In Sweden, the eugenic sterilization of citizens labeled as work-shy and asocial , such as prostitutes and vagrants, was portrayed as a way of strengthening the social-democratic welfare-state itself, by limiting the number of future welfare dependents.

Following Indiana’s introduction of the first eugenic sterilization law in the world in 1907, 33 U.S. states introduced similar legislation. The majority of coerced sterilizations under eugenic statutes across the United States took place after World War 2, in the 1950s and early 1960s. By the early 1960s, the total number of recorded sterilizations had reached over 62,000, most of these performed on individuals labeled as mentally deficient or mentally ill (Largent 2008 ). The last known case was recorded in 1981 in Oregon, which became in 1983 the last state to repeal its sterilization law (see Kevles 1985 ). The Swiss canton of Vaud became the first European setting to adopt a eugenic sterilization law in 1928, a law that was officially abrogated only in 1985 (though no eugenic sterilizations have been documented since the 1960s). The Vaud law was representative of that of other countries in allowing the sterilization without consent of the mentally ill, while its 1931 criminal law included a clause allowing for eugenically motivated abortions. This is a remarkable point considering the intense political struggle to widen access to abortion several decades later. In practice, the main targets of governmental restrictions on reproduction were those categories of the population who were thought to be carriers of degenerate hereditarily transmissible characteristics: the mentally ill, the physically disabled, and those members of the underclasses whose behavior had transgressed social norms, such as unproductive “vagrants” or unmarried mothers. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Estonia all passed eugenic sterilization laws in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Eugenic sterilization was applied on a particularly large scale by Nazi Germany, following the passing of the notorious 1933 Sterilization Law, which introduced compulsory sterilization on eugenic grounds. As a result, since WW2, eugenics has come to be associated with Nazism in public debate. However, eugenic state intervention found support across the political spectrum in the 1920s and 1930s. Switzerland, Sweden, and other Scandinavian countries were among the pioneers of eugenic policy making and eugenic practices in the European context, often with social-democratic as well as right-wing support.

Eugenic policy making was deeply gendered, as scholars such as Mottier ( 2000 ), Kline ( 2001 ), Schoen ( 2005 ), and Stern ( 2005 ) point out. First, the majority of those subjected to coerced sterilization were women, particularly of the underclasses. In Sweden, for example, the number of sterilizations performed on eugenic/social grounds between 1935 and 1975 is currently estimated at around 18,600, over 90 percent of which were performed on women (Broberg and Tydén 2005 , 109); this is a gender proportion echoed in many other countries for which data are available. Second, eugenic policies in turn produced gender, strengthening normative models of femininity and masculinity. Indeed, it is important to emphasize that the categories of mental illness and feeblemindedness, which were mobilized in eugenic sterilization laws, were notoriously vague at the time. They could include any kind of behaviors that deviated from social norms. The narratives used to justify eugenic sterilization of women routinely portrayed them as deviating from the social norms of female respectability, in particular in terms of their sexual morality. Underclass women who had had children out of wedlock (thereby demonstrating loose sexual morals as well as the risk of welfare dependency) thus represented particular targets of coerced sterilizations in democratic states, while women whose behavior deviated from respectable femininity in other ways were also targeted on the grounds of promiscuity, nymphomania, being oversexed, disorderly house keeping, or the inability to financially support children. The numbers of men who were subjected to eugenically motivated castrations were often already institutionalized in psychiatric or penal institutions on the grounds of sexual misbehavior. Although men labeled as sexually abnormal, such as exhibitionists or homosexuals, similarly risked so-called therapeutic castration, not all of these were eugenically driven. Such interventions also reflected the therapeutic aim of moderating deviant sex drives or were accepted voluntarily (with the pressure of long-term internment offered as only alternative). In the United States, where the gender gap in the actual numbers of sterilizations was, until the early 1960s, much less pronounced than in countries such as Sweden or Switzerland, justifications used to legitimize coerced sterilizations were similarly gendered (Kline 2001 , 53). More generally, the original eugenic emphasis on the prevention of the hereditary transmission of defective characteristics became diluted in wider state measures against antisocial behaviors that were not necessarily attributed to strictly hereditary factors. This further blurred the boundaries between eugenic scientific rhetoric and its translation into concrete policy measures.

In sum, eugenic sterilization policies were heavily gendered as well as raced and classed, reflecting states’ concern with control over female bodies and female sexuality as reproducers of the future nation as well as the gendered dimensions of policy making more generally that have been highlighted by political scientists such as Bacchi ( 1999 ), Stetson and Mazur ( 1995 ), and Kantola ( 2006 ). Yet it would be a mistake to assume that women were only ever victims of eugenics. While underclass women were the main social group targeted by eugenic sterilizations, middle-class women were important agents in eugenic policy making. Women’s political organizations such as social purity groups were instrumental in promoting eugenic ideas in the context of wider public debates on the regulation of sexuality between the 1890s and 1930s (Gerodetti 2004 ). By the 1930s and 1940s, bourgeois women were actively engaged in the implementation of eugenic policies, employed as doctors or as state officials in eugenic marriage advice bureaux or carrying out voluntary work in women’s charitable organizations employed with the poor or in church organizations that set up homes for unmarried mothers. Recognizing the importance of gendered models of reproductive agency is not to say, therefore, that states engaging in eugenic policy making exercised male power over its female citizens in any straightforward way. Women were often important agents in the implementation of eugenic measures, while men were sometimes its victims, as we have seen. Furthermore, the picture of state coercion over female reproductive bodies is further blurred by the fact that eugenic ideas could be instrumentalized by women who actively desired sterilization or abortion at a time when few alternative methods of birth control existed, as Schoen ( 2005 ) points out. Even in arenas of extreme reproductive oppression of women such as eugenic sterilization, possibilities of subversion, resistance, and creative reappropriation of eugenic rhetoric can thus be identified.

In more recent decades, organizations defending the reproductive rights of women and men have sprung up in many countries across the world. Compensation claims and other demands for reparative justice toward past victims of coercive sterilizations have been successful in some contexts, for example, in North Carolina and Sweden, while countries such as Switzerland have rejected such demands on the rather spurious grounds that they concerned previous governments. But it is fair to say that, at least in the Western world, the most intense feminist activism has not occurred in resistance to practices of coerced sterilization but rather in defense of abortion rights.

Feminist Mobilizations and Reproductive Freedom

Access to abortion was a central claim of second-wave Western women’s movements in the 1970s and 1980s. It was, arguably, instrumental in mobilizing such movements in the first place. First-wave feminist pioneers such as Marie Stopes in the United Kingdom, Margaret Sanger in the United States, or Alexandra Kollontai in the USSR had already defended the importance for women to freely make their reproductive choices in the 1920s and 1930s, promoting reproductive autonomy as a precondition for the social and political emancipation of women more generally. As Sanger, the founder of the American Birth Control League (which later became Planned Parenthood) wrote in 1919, “No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother” (6). Like many birth control activists at the time (including Marie Stopes), however, she combined this stance with enthusiastic support for negative eugenics, advocating segregation, mandatory contraception, or compulsory sterilization of the “unfit.”

The provision of sex education and contraceptive information had been promoted through the somewhat euphemistic slogan of voluntary motherhood since the 1870s in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Switzerland, though early first-wave feminists generally rejected abortion or even unnatural contraceptive devices (other than the rhythm methods) for encouraging (particularly male) promiscuity. Indeed, early birth control activists linked their claims for female bodily autonomy to a critique of male sexuality and patriarchal marriage norms more generally. Women’s rights over their own bodies were primarily understood by late nineteenth-century bourgeois suffragists and sexual morality campaigners in terms of the right to refuse sexual relations with their husbands unless ensuing offspring were welcome rather than in terms of access to contraceptive devices or abortion. The right to refuse a husband’s sexual demands thus became an important political claim of late nineteenth-century women’s movements, in a historical and legal context that promoted the sexual submission of women within marriage. Early first-wave feminists such as Victoria Woodhull or Angela Heywood attacked marriage laws for legalizing marital rape (Gordon 1999 , 7). Sexual violence and the sexual slavery of married women were frequent tropes of Free Love activists, who advocated the abolition of the institution of marriage altogether. Claims for female bodily integrity were thus intertwined with views of male sexuality as aggressive and predatory, while women’s sexual needs were seen as primarily driven by reproductive instincts rather than sexual lust. Both suffragists and Free Love activists developed a strong pro-motherhood rhetoric, with the latter arguing for the separation of motherhood and legal marriage in the interests of women as well as children (ibid., 13). Women’s natural mothering instincts were thus politically instrumentalized to argue women’s moral superiority over men’s natural sexual impurity. Birth control was consequently premised on temporary or indeed permanent sexual abstinence between spouses.

In stark contrast, the political mobilization around abortion rights that galvanized Western second-wave feminism in the 1970s (with Simone de Beauvoir playing a prominent activist role in the French context) took place in a postsexual revolution climate that generally considered female sexual agency, rather than its absence, as natural. As in first-wave feminism, political claims around abortion continue to be intertwined with debates over sex education, motherhood, femininity, and female sexuality more generally today, whereas men and masculinity are little thematized in contraceptive and abortion rights controversies.

Ongoing threats to past political achievements in this area have ensured that abortion rights continue to make cyclical reappearances on feminist agendas worldwide, against the backdrop of the rise of religious fundamentalist actors in politics since the 1980s. In the United States, abortion rights have been particularly central to recurrent attacks on political achievements in the domain of gender equality more generally by the antifeminist New Right. In reality, the identification of abortion rights with the women’s movement by its opponents perhaps overstates the importance of feminist support for freedom of choice within the U.S. legislative process. Scholars such as Joffe ( 1995 ) and Kellough ( 1996 ) suggest that the support of the medical establishment, motivated by the desire to protect itself from governmental intrusion, was in fact crucial for passing abortion reform in the early 1970s. The so-called pro-choice movement partly overlapped with the women’s movement, but they were not identical. Complex alliances arose with medical groups as well as other political actors, such as the population control organizations that had sprung up in the 1950s and 1960s (Joffe 1995 ; Stetson 2001 , 248). Such political alliances (and resulting framing strategies) were developed by self-styled pro-life as well as pro-choice groups both within and outside of the state (Lovenduski and Outshoorn 1986 ; Ginsburg 1998 ; Stetson 2001 ; Ferree 2003 ). While not denying the importance of feminist activism, Joffe and Stetson thus suggest that the policy trajectory of abortion rights reflects the specific ways feminist claims have been intertwined with other political agendas in the U.S. context (see also Bacchi 1999 , 152).

The landmark case Roe v. Wade (1973) signaled the Supreme Court’s decision to grant women the constitutional right to abortion, though this was conditional upon their physician’s support (and limited to the first trimester of pregnancy). It thereby restricted the power of the state over women’s reproductive choices—if only indirectly, by protecting the autonomy of doctors (who could refuse to perform abortion on the grounds of moral objections) and doctor–patient privacy (Kellough 1996 ). Roe v. Wade has been subjected to endless legal challenges in a wide variety of U.S. states since, as documented by authors such as Luker ( 1984 ) and Solinger ( 1998 ). Over the past decade, there has been a revival of increasingly vocal antiabortion activism in the United States as well as elsewhere, which has strategically employed new medical technologies for visualizing fetuses to great emotional effect, as Morgan and Michaels ( 1999 ) and Palmer ( 2009 ) demonstrate. Yet the worldwide trend has clearly been toward an extension of abortion rights since the adoption of a recommendation to reform punitive legislation of abortion at the UN 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 (Corrêa, Petchesky, and Parker 2008 , 48). Countries such as Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Poland, where access to abortion has been severely restricted in recent years, constitute exceptions that have triggered national as well as international protests.

Political mobilizations around abortion rights were central to feminist contestations of the traditional separation between public and private spheres, as expressed in the famous second-wave slogan the personal is political . There have been many debates within feminist scholarship about the exact meaning of this slogan. Some understood it as a call for the abolition of the family, seen as a source of women’s oppression. Phillips ( 1998 ) points out that it was originally aimed at male socialist or radical activists, to remind them that their theoretical focus on capital and labor ignored the gender inequalities at home. She argues for the integration of private issues such as sexuality and reproduction into political science analyses rather than restricting the focus of the latter to conventionally public domains. Pateman ( 1988 ) calls for an end to the distinction between public and private spheres to facilitate greater politicisation of issues previously defined as private. In contrast, Elshtain ( 1981 ) vehemently rejects such collapsing of the private into the public as totalitarian, since it would leave no area of social life outside of politics. Political theorists such as Petchesky (1984), Okin ( 1991 ), and Phillips ( 1991 ) similarly use abortion rights to argue for the importance of maintaining a separation between the public and the private. They think that reproductive choices should remain part of a private sphere, based on principles of privacy and individual decisionmaking. Such principles have been central to the defense of constitutionally guaranteed individual abortion rights by liberal legal theorists such as Ronald Dworkin ( 1993 ), as well as feminist liberal political theorists. Phillips, for example, argues that whereas the public sphere has conventionally been associated with male political agency and the private sphere with childrearing, sexuality, and the family—traditionally considered a female domain—the distinction between the two spheres should be detached from gender roles and based instead on a right to privacy, itself best seen as degendered.

This position has been criticized by radical feminists, most prominently by Catherine MacKinnon ( 1983 , 1987 ), who argues that the appeal to liberal notions of privacy and “a woman’s right to choose” reflects male interests. Echoing Adrienne Rich’s (1977) views, MacKinnon conceptualizes abortion as another sign of what she believes to be the generalized male sexual exploitation of women rather than in terms of women’s reproductive control. As a feminist strategy the appeal to women’s individual rights is particularly misguided, she believes, since it leaves the foundations of male violence against women unchallenged. Petchesky’s ([1984]1990) influential work Abortion and Woman’s Choice argued for a critical rethinking of the limits of principles of privacy and personal choice, which rejected MacKinnon’s theorization of women as agencyless victims of male domination for its reductionism. Instead, Petchesky undertook to salvage rights-based politics around abortion by emphasizing the need to address concrete inequalities in the conditions in which different categories of women make their individual reproductive choices and by calling for state-funded social supports to help decrease such inequalities for example around race and class. Abortion rights should not be seen as individual rights, she argued, but rather as social rights, requiring a cultural revolution in our understanding of sexuality and reproductive freedom (396). From a different theoretical angle, Drucilla Cornell ( 1995 ) revisits abortion rights discourse to develop a defense of abortion rights that proposes to rethink the liberal notions of rights and privacy. Drawing on the work of John Rawls, Cornell argues that these categories should not be treated as takenforgranted or preexisting but rather as future possibilities and aspirations.

The Gender Politics of New Reproductive Technologies

Whereas feminist mobilizations around abortion and contraception have generally portrayed the latter as individual technologies and their access framed in terms of women’s individual rights, as we have seen, the emergence of new reproductive technologies in recent years has triggered debates questioning the scope for individual choice. New reproductive practices such as in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, sperm and egg donation, genetic engineering, and ultrasound screening have given rise to new areas for feminist thought and practice over recent decades. In the early years of second-wave feminism, Shulamith Firestone ( 1970 ) argued that the problematic linkage of female identity to nature and especially to women’s reproductive functions should, in future times, be dissolved through new technologies of artificial reproduction and contraception. For Firestone, as for de Beauvoir (to whom Firestone’s book was dedicated) before her, women’s biology and central role in reproductive work were largely to blame for women’s subordinate position within society. Firestone’s classic and influential text The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution called for cybernetic technologies that would release women from the burden of giving birth. Allowing for reproduction to take place in laboratory settings would free women from the “barbarity” of both childbirth and pregnancy, that “temporary deformation of the body of the individual for the sake of the species,” Firestone (188) argued. To escape the constraints of motherhood, Firestone advocated the abolition of the nuclear family, proposing to raise children instead in communal settings. The utopian cybernetic communism that she outlined would require four sets of revolutionary transformations, which Firestone theorized as intricately intertwined with each other: (1) the “freeing of women from the tyranny of reproduction by every means possible, and the diffusion of the child-rearing role to the society as a whole, men as well as women” (193); (2)“political autonomy, based on economic independence, of both women and children” (194); (3)“the complete integration of women and children into society” through the abolition of institutions such as schools that bar children from adult society—instead, relationships between adults and children should become equal and intimate, based on free choice rather than material dependency (195); (4) “the sexual freedom of all women and children” (195). Indeed, reflecting the author’s borrowing of Freudian views of children as inherently sexual beings, Firestone argued against sexual repression, promoting sexual freedom for women as well as children. In Firestone’s protechnology, antinatalist work, the futuristic reproductive technologies that she called for were thus portrayed in positive terms as a tool for women’s liberation and societal progress more generally.

However, by the time such technologies became a reality, feminist responses to the developments of reproductive (and genetic) medicine were initially characteristically suspicious. In this, they echoed early hostile reactions to the invention and distribution of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s. Rather than interpreting the pill as a tool for women’s sexual liberation (which it later was blamed for being), 1960s feminist activists criticised the perceived increase in medical control over female bodies as well as the health risks involved, which at the time were indeed much stronger than today. In a similar vein, authors such as Ann Oakley ( 1987 ) feared that those in control of reproductive technologies, doctors and the state, would gain unprecedented control over women, treating them as “walking wombs,” a vision that was also central to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale , which was published in 1985 and triggered much public debate at the time. Concerns were also voiced about the political accountability of reproductive science and medicine. Andrea Dworkin ( 1983 , 183) predicted a future of “reproductive brothels,” where women’s wombs would be sold by male doctors or scientists, “a new kind of pimp,” in the same way as female bodies were already being sold for male sexual pleasure. “Motherhood is becoming a new branch of female prostitution,” Dworkin (181) argued.

The Feminist International Network for Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering (FINRRAGE), founded in 1984, emerged as the most prominent voice in the feminist critique of reproductive technologies (and technology more generally). Regrouping authors such as Gena Corea, Renate Klein, Raymond and Robyn Rowland, Maria Mies, and Janice Raymond, FINRRAGE adopted a strongly antitechnological stance. They declared that reproductive technologies are, by definition, patriarchal and detrimental to women and aim at male control of female bodies. As Raymond ( 1993 , xxxi) put it, “Technological reproduction is first and foremost about the appropriation of the female body,” whereas Mies ( 1987 , 43) wrote that “any woman who is prepared to have a child manufactured for her by a fame- and money-greedy biotechnician must know that in this way she is not only fulfilling herself an individual, often egoistic wish to have a baby, but also surrendering yet another part of the autonomy of the female sex over childbearing to the technopatriarchs.” For Corea ( 1985 , 303), “in controlling the female generative organs and processes, doctors are fulfilling a male need to control woman’s procreative power.”

The role of men as fathers received little analytic attention in FINRRAGE’s writings. To the extent that fathers do appear, they are accused of sharing the general male envy of women’s child-bearing capacity and of intending to use the new technologies to wrestle women’s procreative power away from them (e.g, Rowland 1984 ; Corea 1985 , 9; Raymond 1993 , 29–75). As Raymond ( 1993 , 30) put it, “Fatherhood, not motherhood, is empowered by the new reproductive techniques” that create new norms of fatherhood grounded in male gametes and genes rather than child-rearing work. Rowland used powerful language to warn that new reproductive techniques might lead to the “final solution to the woman question,” rendering women “obsolete” if control over childbearing, that “last power,” was wrestled away from them by men (368). In this she echoed Dworkin’s ( 1983 ) warning of a new kind of holocaust, a “gynocide” where reproductive technologies such as artificial insemination and IVF, in combination with “racist programs of forced sterilization,” would give men “the means to create and control the kind of women they want:…domestics, sex prostitutes and reproductive prostitutes” (188). Raymond ( 1993 , 32) argued that surrogacy practices create a “spermocracy” in which “male potency is power, exercised politically against the real potency of women, whose far greater contribution and relationship to the child is rendered powerless.” In this analysis, the new reproductive techniques thus produce a shift in gender power that puts fathers back in patriarchal control over their offspring, echoing the gendered model of procreative agency that I have highlighted as characteristic of Greek antiquity earlier in this chapter. The ensuing political economy of a “spermatic market” is ruled by men’s “liquid assets,” involving the creation of a “breeder class of women sanctioned by the state” (ibid., 35). FINRRAGE feared that the political power of what Raymond calls “father essentialism” and “ejaculatory fatherhood” would further increase the power of the fathers’ rights movements that emerged since the 1970s, against a backdrop of controversies around child custody and family law more generally in countries such as the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Italy, Greece, and Germany. Organizations such as Families Need Fathers or Fathers 4 Justice have engaged in increasingly vocal political activism over the past decade.

More generally, FINRRAGE theorized new reproductive technologies as male tools for propping up patriarchy, pointing at the formal or informal exclusion of single and lesbian women from practices such as artificial insemination with donor, access to which was, until recent years, often made conditional on being married. FINRRAGE thus developed a strongly binary theorization of reproductive medicine as an arena of male power over passive, female bodies, where women-hating male scientists or “pharmacrats,” to borrow Corea’s vocabulary, perform invasive, expensive, and risky interventions on women’s bodies (see also Klein 1989 ). Additionally, similarly to Stanworth ( 1987 ), FINRRAGE warned that techniques such as artificial insemination represented a slippery slope toward eugenics (Finger 1984 ; Corea 1985 ; Spallone 1987 ; Steinberg 1987 ). This argument was put particularly vehemently by Corea ( 1985 ), whose book The Mother Machine started with an outline of the ways artificial insemination could be used in eugenic programs to improve the quality of the human race by selecting who would be allowed to reproduce. Corea warned that while sterilization and birth control had, in past times, been tools of “negative eugenics” (which aims to prevent breeding by “defective” individuals), reproductive technologies such as artificial insemination, embryo transfer, IVF, cloning and “artificial wombs” offered dangerous new possibilities for “positive eugenics” (increasing reproduction by those categories of the population that are considered superior) (Corea 1985 , 20). Other authors criticized the formal or informal exclusion of disabled women from such practices (e.g., Steinberg 1987 ). FINRRAGE’s founding resolution thus included opposition to “eugenic population policies, in particular the fabrication of ‘perfect babies’” as well as the fight against the “expropriation” and “dissection” of the female body by new reproductive practices (ibid., 329).

Today, both the extreme antitechnology and antinatalist stances have faded into the backdrop in feminist thought. The role and impact of reproductive and genetic medicine on gender relations and politics of the body tend to be debated in considerably less hostile terms, despite the fact that some of the worst fears of FINRRAGE, including the commercialization of new reproductive technologies and inequalities in access to the possibilities that they offer, have long since become reality. Instead, recent scholarship explores the ways practices in these fast-moving fields are profoundly transforming ideas of parenthood, kinship, and nature and the subjective meanings that women and men who undergo fertility treatments give to their experiences (e.g., Franklin 1997 , 2007 ; see also Edwards et al. 1993 ; Farquhar 1996 ). Whereas feminist debates on reproductive medicine in the 1980s and 1990s had tended to center on the Western contexts in which the new techniques first emerged, recent anthropological studies have done much to enrich current understandings of the ways reproductive rights and politics are subjectively experienced by citizens in non-Western as well as Western contexts and to identify interactions and negotiations between state institutions, private businesses, and religious authorities in such settings. Nowadays, the highest rate of IVF treatments in the world is found in Israel. As Susan Kahn’s ( 2000 ) book Reproducing Jews highlights, assisted conception has been enthusiastically embraced in this country, where it is promoted by ultraorthodox and secular forces alike. New reproductive techniques have also been welcomed in various Muslim countries, as demonstrated by Marcia Inhorn’s series of studies of practices of egg and sperm donation in Egypt, Iran, and Lebanon (Inhorn 2007 ; Inhorn et al. 2009 ); Irène Maffi’s ( 2012 ) research on state policies around childbirth in Jordan, which discusses the ways state-promoted obstetric techniques have transformed the relationship of Jordanian women with their reproductive bodies; and Zeynep Gürtin’s ( 2012 ) analysis of IVF practices in Turkey. While these authors importantly remind us of the cultural specificity of local experiences, other scholars have called for political and research strategies that explore transnational structural inequalities in the politics of reproduction, emphasizing the need to identify possibilities for global political alliances (Ginsburg and Rapp 1995 ).

Concluding Comments

To conclude, reproductive rights have been one of the central arenas in which feminists have creatively questioned conventional understandings of politics and problematized previously takenforgranted divisions between the public and the private spheres. Abortion rights in particular continue to act as a yardstick for women’s rights and gender equality more generally. They consequently continue to be the target of renewed political attacks from religious fundamentalist and other conservative forces in many national settings today. Gender scholarship in this area has produced a rethinking of the boundaries of the political, emphasizing the importance of the body, sexuality, and normative models of masculinity and femininity for political theory as well as practice. Such research has demonstrated how some categories of citizens are encouraged to reproduce, while others are disempowered from doing so, in ways that reflect power relations around gender. It has also highlighted the importance of exploring what Colen ( 1986 ) calls stratified reproduction , that is, the ways gender power intersects with sexual identity, social class, disability, race, and other identity markers in reproductive activities. Men and (heterosexual or gay) fathers still remain somewhat of a blind spot in much theoretical and empirical research on reproductive rights and politics, however. For example, a review of anthropological research on women’s reproductive agency and health carried out in 1996 identified over 150 volumes dedicated to these topics, but only very few studies of men’s reproductive experiences (Inhorn 2006 ; see also Inhorn et al. 2009 ) or of gay men as fathers, caregivers, or sperm donors (but see Mosegaard 2009 ).

More generally, contemporary political theorists have importantly shown the implicitly male-centered bias of much of political thought (Coole 1987 ; Pateman 1988 ). Traditional political theory has relegated themes conventionally associated with femininity such as reproduction, childcare, and sexuality to the private sphere and therefore outside of the scope of both politics and political theory (see also Mottier 2004 , 281). Themes such as men’s procreative activities, male sexualities, or the role of men in childrearing have thus been neglected in (mainstream as well as feminist) political debate and theory, as political theorists such as Pateman ( 1988 ) and Carver ( 2004 ) point out. In this sense and despite FINRRAGE’s gloomy warnings of a male war against female procreative prominence, men remain the second sex in reproduction. 1

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Terrell Carver, Karen Celis, James Clackson, Rebecca Flemming, Sarah Franklin, Johanna Kantola, Duncan Kelly, George Owers, Georgina Waylen, Laurel Weldon and an anonymous reviewer of an earlier draft of this chapter for their very helpful comments and suggestions.

I borrow this expression from Inhorn et al. ( 2009 ).

Anagnost, Ann . 1995 . “A surfeit of bodies: population and the rationality of the state in Post-Mao China.” In Faye D. Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp , eds., Conceiving the new world order: The global politics of reproduction . Berkeley: University of California Press, 22–22.

Google Scholar

Google Preview

Atwood, Margaret . 1985 . The handmaid’s tale . Toronto: McLelland and Steward.

Bacchi, Carol Lee . 1999 . Women, policy and politics: The construction of policy problems . London: SAGE.

Broberg, Gunnar , and Mattias Tydén . 2005 . “Eugenics in Sweden: Efficient care.” In Gunnar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen , eds., Eugenics and the welfare state: sterilization policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland . East Lansing: Michigan State University, 77–77.

Carver, Terrell . 2004 . Men in political theory . Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Colen, Shellee . 1986 . “With respect and feelings: voices of West Indian childcare and domestic workers in New York City.” In Johnnetta B. Cole, ed., All American women: Lines that divide, ties that bind . New York: Free Press, 46–46.

Coole, Diana . 1987 . Women in political theory: From ancient misogyny to contemporary feminism . Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

Corea, Gena . 1985 . The mother machine: Reproductive technologies from artificial insemination to artificial wombs . London: Women’s Press.

Cornell, Drucilla . 1995 . The imaginary domain: Abortion, pornography and sexual harassment . New York: Routledge.

Corrêa, Sonia , Rosalind Petchesky , and Richard Parker . 2008 . Sexuality, health and human rights . London: Routledge.

de Beauvoir, Simone . [1949]. 1976 a. Le deuxi è me sexe . vol. 1. Paris: Gallimard.

de Beauvoir, Simone . [1949] 1976 b. Le deuxi è me sexe , vol. 2. Paris: Gallimard.

Dworkin, Andrea . 1983 . Right-wing women: The politics of domesticated females . New York: Perigree Books.

Dworkin, Ronald . 1993 . Life’s dominion: An argument about abortion, euthanasia and individual freedom . New York: Albert A. Knopf.

Edwards, Jeanette , Sarah Franklin , Eric Hirsch , Frances Price , and Marilyn Strathern (Eds.). 1993 . Technologies of procreation: Kinship in the age of assisted conception . Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Eisenstein, Zillah . 1983 . “The state, the patriarchal family and working mothers.” In Irene Diamond, ed., Families, politics and public policy . New York: Longman.

Elshtain, Jean Bethke . 1981 . Public man, private woman . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Farquhar, Dion . 1996 . The other machine: Discourse and reproductive technologies . New York: Routledge.

Ferree, Myra Marx . 2003 . “ Resonance and radicalism: feminist framing in the abortion debates of the United States and Germany. ” American Journal of Sociology 109(2):304–344.

Finger, Anne . 1984 . “Claiming all of our bodies: Reproductive rights and disability.” In Rita Arditti , Renate Duelli Klein , and Shelley Minden , eds., Test-tube women: What future for motherhood? London: Pandora Press, 281–297.

Firestone, Shulamith . 1970 . The dialectic of sex: The case for feminist revolution . New York: Bantam Books.

Foucault, Michel . 1990 . The history of sexuality, volume 1: An introduction . New York: Random House.

Franklin, Sarah . 1997 . Embodied progress: A cultural account of assisted conception . London: Routledge.

Franklin, Sarah . 2007 . Dolly mixtures: The remaking of genealogy . Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Gerodetti, Natalia . 2004 . “ Lay experts: Women’s social purity groups and the politics of sexuality in late nineteenth and early twentienth century Switzerland. ” Women’s History Review 13(4): 585–610.

Ginsburg, Faye D. ( 1998 ). Contested lives: The abortion debate in an American community . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ginsburg, Faye D. , and Rayna Rapp (Eds.). 1995 . Conceiving the new world order: The global politics of reproduction . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gordon, Linda . 1999 . “Voluntary motherhood: The beginnings of feminist birth control ideas in the United States.” In Judith Walzer Leavitt, ed., Women and health in America , 2d rev. ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 104–116.

Gürtin, Zeynep . 2012 . “Assisted reproduction in secular Turkey: Regulation, rhetoric and the role of religion.” In Marcia Inhorn and Soraya Tremayne , eds., Islam and assisted reproductive technologies: Sunni and Shia perspectives . New York: Berghahn Books.

Hernes, Helga Maria . 1987 . Welfare state and woman power: Essays in state feminism . Oslo: Norwegian University Press.

Inhorn, Marcia . 2006 . “ Defining women’s health: A dozen messages from more than 150 ethnographies. ” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 20(3): 345–378.

Inhorn, Marcia (Ed.). 2007 . Reproductive disruptions: Gender, technology and biopolitics in the new millenium . New York: Berghahn Books.

Inhorn, Marcia C. , Tine Tjørnhøj-Thomsen , Helene Goldberg , and Maruska La Cour Mosegaard (Eds.). 2009 . Reconceiving the second sex: Men, masculinity and reproduction . New York: Berghahn Books.

Joffe, Carole . 1995 . Doctors of conscience: The struggle to provide abortion before and after Roe vs Wade . Boston: Beacon Press.

Kahn, Susan Martha . 2000 . Reproducing Jews: A cultural account of assisted conception in Israel . Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Kantola, Johanna . 2006 . Feminists theorise the state . London: Palgrave McMillan.

Kellough, Gail . 1996 . Aborting law: An exploration of the politics of motherhood and medicine . Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Kevles, Daniel . 1985 . In the name of eugenics: genetics and the uses of human heredity . New York: Knopf.

King, Desmond , and Randall Hansen . 1999 . “ Experts at work: state autonomy, social learning and eugenic sterilization in 1930s Britain. ” British Journal of Political Science 29(1): 77–107.

Klein, Renate . 1989 . Infertility: Women speak out about their experiences of reproductive medicine . Melbourne: Spinifex Press.

Kline, Wendy . 2001 . Building a better race: Gender, sexuality and eugenics from the turn of the century to the baby boom . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Largent, Mark A . 2008 . Breeding contempt: The history of forced sterilization in the United States . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutger’s University Press.

Levine, Philippa . 2010 . “Anthropology, colonialism, and eugenics.” In Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine , eds., The Oxford handbook of the history of eugenics . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 43–43.

Lovenduski, Joni , and Joyce Outshoorn (Eds.). 1986 . The new politics of abortion . London: SAGE.

Luker, Kristin . 1984 . Abortion and the politics of motherhood. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Maffi, Irène . 2012 . Women, health and the state in the Middle East: The politics and culture of childbirth in Jordan . London: I. B. Tauris.

MacKinnon, Catherine . 1983 . “ The male ideology of privacy: a feminist perspective on the right to abortion, ” Radical America 17: 22–35.

MacKinnon, Catherine . 1987 . Feminism unmodified . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Morgan, Lynn M. , and Meredith W. Michaels (Eds.). 1999 . Fetal subjects, feminist positions . Philadelphia: University of Pensylvania Press.

Mies, Maria . 1987 . “Why do we need all this? A call against genetic engineering and reproductive technology.” In Patricia Spallone and Deborah Lynn Steinberg , eds., Made to order: the myth of reproductive and genetic progress . Oxford: Pergamon Press, 34–34.

Mosegaard, Maruska LaCour . 2009 . “Stories of fatherhood: Kinship in the making.” In Maria C. Inhorn , Tine Tjørnhøj-Thomsen , Helene Goldberg , and Maruska La Cour Mosegaard , eds., Reconceiving the second sex: Men, masculinity and reproduction . New York: Berghahn Books, 349–349.

Mottier, Véronique . 2000 . “ Narratives of national identity: Sexuality, race, and the Swiss ‘Dream of Order.’ ” Swiss Journal of Sociology 26: 533–556.

Mottier, Véronique . 2004 . “Feminism and gender theory: The return of the state.” In Gerald F. Gaus and Chandran Kukathas , eds., Handbook of political theory . London: SAGE, 277–277.

Mottier, Véronique . 2010 . “Eugenics and the state: Policy-making in comparative perspective.” In Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine , eds., The Oxford handbook of the history of eugenics . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 134–134.

Nagel, Joanne . 2003 . Race, ethnicity and sexuality: Intimate intersections, forbidden frontiers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Oakley, Ann . 1987 . “From walking wombs to test-tube babies.” In Michelle Stanworth, ed., Reproductive technologies: Gender, motherhood and medicine . Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 36–36.

Okin, Susan Moller . 1991 . “Gender, the public and the private.” In David Held, ed., Political theory today . Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 67–67.

Palmer, Julie . 2009 . “ Seeing and knowing: ultrasound imagies in the contemporary abortion debate. ” Feminist Theory 10(2): 173–189.

Pateman, Carole . 1988 . The sexual contract . Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Pearson, Karl . [1909] 1998 . “The scope and importance to the state of the science of national eugenics.” In Lucy Bland and Laura Doan , eds., Sexology uncensored: The documents of sexual science . Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 169–171.

Petchesky, Rosalind Pollack . [1984] 1990 . Abortion and woman’s choice: The state, sexuality and reproductive freedom . Boston: Northeastern University Press.

Phillips, Anne . 1991 . Engendering democracy . Cambridge: Polity Press.

Phillips, Anne . 1998 . “Introduction.” In Anne Phillips, ed., Feminism and politics . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1–1.

Raymond, Janice G . 1993 . Women as wombs: Reproductive technologies and the battle over women’s freedom . San Francisco: Harper.

Rich, Adrienne . 1976 . Of woman born: Motherhood as experience and institution . New York: Norton.

Roberts, Dorothy . 1997 . Killing the black body: Race, reproduction and the meaning of liberty . New York: Vintage Books.

Rowland, Robyn . 1984 . “Reproductive technologies: The final solution to the woman question?”In Rita Arditti , Renate Duelli Klein , and Shelley Minden , eds., Test-tube women: What future for motherhood? London: Pandora Press, 356–369.

Sanger, Margaret . 1919 . “A parents’ problem or women’s?” The Birth Control Review (March), 6–7.

Schoen, Johanna . 2005 . Choice and coercion: Birth control, sterilization and abortion in public health and welfare . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Siim, Birte . 1988 . “Towards a feminist rethinking of the welfare state.” In Kathleen B. Jones and Anna G. Jonasdottir , eds., The political interests of gender . London: SAGE, 160–160.

Solinger, Rickie (Ed.). 1998 . Abortion wars: A half-century of struggle, 1950–2000 . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Spallone, Patricia . 1987 . “Reproductive technology and the state: The Warnock Report and its clones.” In Patricia Spallone and Deborah Lynn Steinberg , eds., Made to order: The myth of reproductive and genetic progress . Oxford: Pergamon Press, 166–166.

Stanworth, Michelle . 1987 . “The deconstruction of motherhood.” In Michelle Stanworth, ed., Reproductive technologies: Gender, motherhood and medicine . Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 10–10.

Steinberg, Deborah Lynn . 1987 . “Selective breeding and social engineering: Discriminatory politics of access to artificial insemination by donor in Great Britain.” In Patricia Spallone and Deborah Lynn Steinberg , eds., Made to order: The myth of reproductive and genetic progress . Oxford: Pergamon Press, 184–184.

Stern, Alexandra Minna . 2005 . Eugenic nation: Faults and frontiers of better breeding in modern America . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Stetson, Dorothy McBride (Ed.). 2001 . Abortion politics, women’s movements and the democratic state: A comparative study of state feminism . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stetson, Dorothy McBride , and Amy Mazur (Eds.). 1995 . Comparative state feminism . London: SAGE.

Yuval-Davis, Nira . 1997 . Gender and nation . London: SAGE.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Reproductive Rights - Free Essay Samples And Topic Ideas

Reproductive rights encompass the rights of individuals to make decisions concerning reproduction, family planning, and access to reproductive health services. Essays on reproductive rights could explore the historical and contemporary debates surrounding issues like abortion, contraception, and access to reproductive healthcare. Moreover, discussions might examine the intersection of reproductive rights with gender equality, socio-economic equity, and religious beliefs. Analyzing the impact of legal frameworks, governmental policies, and social movements on reproductive rights, and examining case studies from different cultural and national contexts can provide a comprehensive understanding of the complexities surrounding reproductive autonomy and justice. A vast selection of complimentary essay illustrations pertaining to Reproductive Rights you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

An Issue of Women’s Reproductive Rights

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that men and women are created equal (Elizabeth Cady Stanton). In America this has been the basis of what our nation stands for. It is stated that every citizen has the right to equality that shall not be stripped away, in many cases that is not true. Whether man or women you should possess the same rights, but more often than not the women's rights are taken away. There are many instances in […]

The Status of Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Rights

The consequences of sexual behaviour between women and men have driven a desire and determination of women to control their fertility, yet in an environment in which anti-choice legislators and organizations do not protect women's reproductive rights, there is an ongoing dispute on who decides the fate of such rights. The status of women's sexual and reproductive rights remains controversial and while there have been many attempts to gain such basic human right, the fight for reproductive freedoms remains intense. […]

Health Care Policy Analysis

Introduction Women’s reproductive rights have been an ongoing issue the United States has dealt with for decades. The main issues surrounding women’s rights, namely the woman’s right to choose, has been debated and politicized, often times with out the actual input from a woman. This policy analysis will examine the relationship between politicizing the reproductive rights of women coupled with the rights of employers to refuse coverage for birth control and the policies surrounding these issues. In 2018, Federal policy […]

We will write an essay sample crafted to your needs.

Women’s Reproductive Rights are under Attack

Women's reproductive rights have always been threatened because of sexist beliefs. Recently, however, they're being threatened in America in a subtler, but potentially more dangerous way. Product manufacturers market items towards women and make them more expensive than similar items for men, politicians enact laws whose main goal is to limit women's reproductive rights, and medical professionals downplay women's pain in emergency rooms. Personally, I believe that everyone should have access to proper healthcare. Of course, there are some who […]

Bella by Alejandro Gomez Monteverde

Abstract A major tie of the film is the defense of life, from the moment of its conception. It is a graphic display of the horror that pulses in our society, in where many of these young women who after becoming pregnant have no one to turn to, in where all the factors of life have lead them to take a terrible decision that many later regret which is abortion. In the movie ¨Bella¨ is shows us a bit of […]

Women’s Rights to Choose

Every person in the United States is granted inalienable rights, whether it be to practice their own religion or vote, which should include autonomy over their own bodies.  A woman should have the right to choose what she does with her own body, and in 1973 that became a possibility for American women.  In 1973 Roe v. Wade made it possible for women to legally choose to terminate unwanted pregnancies within their first two trimesters.  The government finally took into […]

The Murder of Innocence

Abortion is a new generation's way of shrugging off accountability of their action at the cost of human life agreeing to the first revision to the structure that says we have the proper way to give of discourse. Me personally for one beyond any doubt that most of us would agree to the reality that ready to say and do what we need and select. For it is our choice to control of speech our conclusions. In connection, moms at […]

The Affects of Legalized Abortion on High School Graduation Rates

The legalization of terminating a pregnancy in the United Sates has been one of the greatest and most controversial debates in history starting as early as the 1900s. Decriminalizing abortion was thought to affect many aspects of our society; one of the main aspects being our economy through the increase of high school graduates. High school drop out rates have proven to be directly connected to the legalization of abortion as many teens choose to drop out of school to […]

Why the Declaration of Independence is Compelling?

What does Freedom means? What does freedom means to everyone? In the Declaration of Independence the United States got free from Great Britain. All men are equal and that everyone has their basic human rights. The Declaration of Independence is the most compelling for Americans today because it gave hope to everyone to be free, it made America what it is today, and gave us basic human rights that all men are created equally. Americans think about the Declaration of […]

Abortion Issue: Saving a Life

Abortion is a topic that is a controversial issues in the United States today. Abortion is the removal of an embryo from the female's uterus resulting to the end of pregnancy (dictionary.com). Weather abortion is legal or not women around the world have tried to end their pregnancies. Women having an abortion are jeporadizing their safety and health by self inducing or seeking illegal product. This procedure is done by a licensed healthcare professional. The procedure is done by a […]

Let’s Talk about my Abortion Article

Why is something that requires two people, almost always considered the woman's problem? Every answer to this question is different, more aggressive in some cases, but it narrows down to basic human rights. Now you may be asking "What the hell is she talking about?" and I can assure you, we will get to that. I'd like for you to first put yourself in a situation: You're given a puppy, yet you're allergic to dogs and absolutely do not have […]

Abortion and Adoption

Abortion is not as simple as walking into a medical office and having the procedure performed. Although Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in the United States in 1973 women often have to deal with judgment from others including not only protestors but significant others and family members, choosing between abortion and adoption, emotional stress possibly from the reason they are needing an abortion, physical complications, as well as state governments trying to take away their right to have an […]

To Choose or not to Choose

Abortion can be a very disputed topic among many different groups of people. However the question comes down to , should all women be allowed to choose or should all abortions no matter the circumstances be considered murder? No matter what, it is believed that the baby should always have a fair opportunity at a life of their own however certain circumstances come down to abortion being the best option not only for the mother but the baby as well. […]

Essay about Abortion as a Problem

Although abortion can be seen as a solution to a problem, many see abortion as a problem itself. A handful of countries, such as The Philippines, allow legal abortions only when the mother’s life is in danger. However, a past president of the National Medical Association, Jasper Williams, Jr., M.D. claims, “The number of medical cases in which abortion is an indicated and appropriate part of the treatment is practically nil. Since 1953, I have never seen a patient who […]

Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology

According to Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year. Unwanted pregnancies can be very stressful. This abortion procedure is the termination of pregnancy that’s done during a later stage of pregnancy, usually between 14 and 24 weeks. In some cases, late-term abortions are done in the second trimester, these undergo a surgical abortion called dilation and evacuation. There are four medical procedures related with late- term abortion which include dilation […]

Reflections on Abortions after Roe V. Wade

The increasing uncertainty of what can and cannot be said within a professional setting is something that has confounded me many times throughout my limited time in the workforce. As a member of the National Forensics League, it is easy for me to consider the advantages of individuals "sometimes sacrificing their own voice" in favor of giving way to others to avoid what is socially seen as "civil discourse" (Davenport-Sypher). Obviously, it would be easier to assert ourselves if everyone […]

Analyzing the Legal and Social Implications: a Summary of Roe V. Wade

The decision in Roe v. Wade, made by the United States Supreme Court in 1973, has profoundly influenced both the legal framework and societal views on abortion and reproductive rights. The ruling established a woman's right to make decisions about her own pregnancy, emphasizing this as a matter of privacy protected under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This significant judicial recognition shifted how reproductive rights are perceived, limiting the state's ability to impose blanket prohibitions or severe […]

Balancing Acts: Planned Parenthood V. Casey and Reproductive Rights

A legal saga steamed maternity in 1992 marked a moment watershed in a tapestry productive conversation rights difficult in actual unis. So as proceeded in a visit preceding criticism is situated a roe deer v. Harden he in 1973, this case diligently investigated constitutional specific terms in borders Pennsylvania controls abortion operate, that breathed to set limitations we abortion. A legal fight opened he despite basis inveterate arguments, because a supreme court was grabbed with thin balance between a woman […]

Additional Example Essays

• Socioautobiography Choices and Experiences Growing up
• Research Paper #1 – The Trail of Tears
• Rosa Parks Vs. Harriet Tubman
• Drunk Driving
• History of Mummification
• Why Gun Control Won’t Work
• Homelessness Problem In LA
• Great Depression vs. Great Recession
• Was the American Revolution really Revolutionary?
• Equality Between Men and Women
• Supreme Court Majority Opinion
• "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

21 Reproductive Rights: A Solution, Not a Political Issue

A Solution, Not a Political Issue

Margaret M. Davis

Click to listen to this essay

The intent of Davis’s essay is clear: women should be in control of their own reproductive rights. Davis uses a combination of research and personal anecdotes to illustrate the negative impacts for women without reproductive rights and highlights those fighting for these rights. The images provided throughout the essay are effective in playing with formatting and stretching the limits of what a standard academic essay can look like. One of the most interesting aspects of this piece is Davis’s use of social media (Facebook in particular) as a form of research material. Davis observes that people use social media to create a conversation where “each person contributes their own voices to the dialogue at hand.” In doing so, Davis emphasizes how social media becomes a means for advocacy where the public are social writers.

Margaret Davis

ENGLWRIT 112: College Writing

Day Month Year

Reproductive Rights: A Solution, Not a Political Issue

The right to have a family, be given information on where to get help, and decide what to do with one’s own body should not be something a woman has to fight for. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as “the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health” (“Reproductive Health”). For women, these rights sometimes include: the right to legal and safe abortion, the right to birth control, the right to education and access in order to make free and informed choices, and many more. Yet what seem like basic rights women should have are, in fact, not actually enforced.

Many of the current policies for reproductive rights are at the state level, but President Trump has taken away some of these rights altogether. President Trump and the administration he appointed in the Department of Health and Human Services issued new rules making it no longer mandatory for health care insurance to cover birth control, claiming 99.9% of women will be unaffected by this change, even though over 55 million women have access to birth control for free because access to it is mandatory as stated by existing policies (Goldstein et al.). President Trump described it as stripping the new health care bill of “essential benefits” in an aim to repeal Obamacare (Pear et al.). His words are only directed to the beneficiaries of this policy and states this is a “win for religious liberty,” yet he completely ignores the female employees that this mandate will affect (Pear et al.). What is even more concerning is that women are not involved in making these decisions. People retweeted a picture of President Trump, along with former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus; Director of the National Trade Council Peter Navarro; President Trump’s advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner; Senior Advisor to the President Stephen Miller; and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, reinstituting the global gag rule removing U.S. funding to any organizations in developing nations that offer abortions even if the organization provides those services with their own funding (Nikolau) (see fig.1). Although this issue expands further than just birth control and covering abortion rights or other means of preventative care, this issue affects 50% of the population making it a huge concern for many.

Reproductive rights should not be a political issue; it should be a solution for all women and their decision to do what they want with their bodies. As a young woman, I fear what President Trump and his administration might do to many of my rights. President Trump has made it no longer mandatory for insurance companies to provide women with birth control coverage and is trying to ban abortions for good. I decided to get the arm implant as a form of birth control and without insurance coverage, the device and the procedure would cost over a thousand dollars. For many, including myself, birth control is not only used to prevent unintentional pregnancies, but to manage period symptoms. Many men do not see birth control as necessary, but for some women, it is a treatment for health conditions such as premenstrual dysmorphic disorder or endometriosis. Because of President Trump’s new insurance policy, millions of women will be paying out of pocket for something to simply ease their daily life or make their periods even somewhat bearable. I remember many of my friends rushing to get some form of birth control right after Trump was elected before he could change the insurance policies. It was astonishing to see so many women scared for something that seems like such a basic right. It was an eye-opener for me because I never thought some of these basic rights about my body could be threatened until then. This policy is important for not only me, but half the world’s population – even if they are not under President Trump’s administration. The right to make choices for one’s own body is not ever something that should be debated by a room of a handful of men. Even in a developing nation, women should never feel their bodies are being controlled by anyone but themselves, which the current policies at hand are overstepping.

I searched Facebook for posts regarding reproductive rights around 2016 to the present, and I found three main types of posts: personal stories, concerns for the future, and posts educating the public. The message of each of those stories was the same though: reproductive rights is a choice they should have no matter what. The majority of the personal stories and concerns I found were specifically in the Facebook group, “Pantsuit Nation.” This group is a safe space for many women (and some men) to post their stories and their concerns to share with over a million others around the world. One example is a story posted by Holly Rawlings (see fig. 2). Rawlings includes personal details about the decisions she faced and what factors contributed to the decision she made in the end. Stories like these using emotional appeal get both women and men reacting and supporting the person posting. Many others in Pantsuit Nation have posted their stories about going through abortions (some legal, some not) and how the legal issues around it impacted their lives for better or for worse. Other stories included how birth control has saved their lives quite literally for health reasons. By posting as a Facebook post specifically in Pantsuit Nation rather than a tweet or on their wall, these women open up completely allowing the audience to be impacted more by their words.

The other type of posts I saw were about the public’s concerns about new policies regarding women’s rights and other politicians trying to educate the public about what is really happening. Judy Gumbo Albert voices her concern and asks people to support Planned Parenthood (see fig. 3). Albert, like many, is speaking out in order to gain support or voice an opinion. Some of the more educational posts, like one by Senator Elizabeth Warren, use the logical appeal and include facts like “Contraception not only prevents pregnancy and helps control health conditions – it gives women more chances to go to school, get jobs, create businesses, and grow our economy” (Warren). The logical appeal in conjunction with personal anecdotes of what society used to be like before all of the progress that has been made makes the reader critically reflect on the past and where we stand now. Their posts also seemed more hopeful, sometimes saying, “we must take action” or “we can’t go back to the days where women didn’t have these rights.” Again, using Facebook posts as their mediums allows the public to respond easily and voice their opinions. It is a less formal way of writing, but a conversation is still being had where each person contributes their own voices to the dialogue at hand.

After posting in Pantsuit Nation, over 3.5K people liked my post and 490 people have commented or responded to comments made (see fig. 4). Many of the comments were in agreement with my post saying, “Stay strong braveheart!” and “You go woman <3!” It was amazing to see that much support on a post that I was simply passionate about. It was also amazing to see the different perspectives people had. Women from different generations who lived during a time where birth control was illegal unless they were married responded. Other people also opened the conversation to the double standard for men: Viagra, a hormone regulator for men, is apparently covered by Medicaid. It was an astonishing experience to see in real time people adding their opinions to an existing conversation and how many women are impacted by the policy initiated by President Trump and his administration.

The right to make choices about one’s own body should never be questioned or threatened, but unfortunately, we are seeing this all around the world. Abortions, in particular, are an area of concern. Many pro-life supporters are shaming women about getting abortions, even if it is a life-threatening condition or they know they cannot support a child at that stage in their life. And when it is illegal, women still go through with abortions, only it typically is unsafe and can permanently injure them. In the most extreme, women have their boyfriends punch them in the stomach or insert knitting needles into their vagina, or even throw themselves down the stairs in order to miscarry. But the most effective way to reduce abortions is in fact to provide women effective birth control. Seems circular, right? That’s because it is. According to Planned Parenthood, over 2.2 million unplanned pregnancies are prevented each year from family planning services available through Medicaid and Title X of the Public Health Service Act, and the number of abortions in the U.S. would be two-thirds higher than it is now without these services. Millions of women are greatly impacted without these reproductive rights, and it should be a crime to let men dictate our access to basic health care.

Works Cited

Goldstein, Amy, et al. “Trump administration narrows Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate.” The Washington Post , 6 Oct. 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-administration-could-narrow-affordable-care-acts-contraception-mandate/2017/10/05/16139400-a9f0-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html?utm_term=.ca7b622775aa .

Pear, Robert, et al. “Trump Administration Rolls Back Birth Control Mandate.” The New York Times , 6 Oct. 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/us/politics/trump-contraception-birth-control.html .

“Reproductive Health.” World Health Organization , 2018, http://www.who.int/topics/reproductive_health/en/ .

Warren, Elizabeth. Addressing President Trump’s attack on ACA’s birth control mandate. Facebook , 16 Oct. 2017, https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fsenatorelizabethwarren%2Fposts%2F863526300476531 .

Images Cited

Albert, Judy Gumbo. Concern about birth control to Pantsuit Nation. Facebook , 16 Nov. 2016, https://www.facebook.com/groups/pantsuitnation/permalink/1128652583899009/ .

Davis, Meg. Social Media Post to Pantsuit Nation. Facebook , 22 Apr. 2018, https://www.facebook.com/groups/pantsuitnation/permalink/1804665312964396/?comment_id=1810084122422515&reply_comment_id=1811223262308601&notif_id=1524768465620782&notif_t=group_comment&ref=notif .

Rawlings, Holly. Abortion story to Pantsuit Nation. Facebook , 17 May 2017, https://www.facebook.com/groups/pantsuitnation/permalink/1473303089433955/ .

Vucci, Evan. “President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Jan. 23, 2017, in Washington.” Humanosphere , 24 Jan. 2017, http://www.humanosphere.org/global-health/2017/01/trumps-gag-rule-endangers-the-lives-of-women-around-the-world/ .

UMass Amherst Writing Program Student Writing Anthology by Margaret M. Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Reproductive Rights Through the Lens of Causal Stories: A Policy Analysis

Access full-text files, journal title, journal issn, volume title.

Reproductive Rights Through the Lens of Causal Stories: A Policy Analysis seeks to draw a connection between reproductive rights policy, causal stories, and public opinion. The causal stories theory explains that the way we define a problem–specifically, how we attribute blame and responsibility to that problem and whether or not we view it as amenable to change by human intervention–influences the government’s response to them. Thus, causal stories often translate into public policy responses. By marking out important punctuations in reproductive rights policy, this thesis traces the historical evolution of reproductive rights, uses the events of the time to gauge the causal stories influencing policy, evaluates the role that political actors have played in promoting those causal stories, and measures how public opinion has responded to certain policy decisions. A core argument in this thesis is that, for a causal story to effect policy change, the causal story must have majority public support because the U.S. government is designed to be responsive to public opinion. To assess this claim, I compare reproductive rights policy and the causal stories implicated in it with public opinion, mainly gathered through public opinion polling results throughout the last few decades. I find that, for the most part, this claim holds up relatively well; however, in 2022, reproductive rights experienced a significant shift that ran contrary to public opinion. The thesis ends with a discussion of what the overturn of Roe v. Wade signals for the democraticness of the Supreme Court, the causal stories involved in the decision, and what this means for the future of American democracy.

Description

Lcsh subject headings, collections.

Women’s reproductive rights: repairing gender-based harm in the Inter-American System of Human Rights

File version.

• Published version

Department affiliated with

Qualification level, qualification name, institution, full text available, legacy posted date, usage metrics.

Women in the States

In this section, introduction, the reproductive rights composite score, trends in women’s reproductive rights, access to abortion, the affordable care act and contraceptive coverage, emergency contraception, medicaid expansion and state medicaid family planning eligibility expansions, other family planning policies and resources, access to fertility treatments, mandatory sex education in schools, same-sex marriage and second-parent adoption, fertility, natality, and infant health.

• Women’s Fertility

Prenatal Care

Low birth weight, infant mortality, appendix tables.

Reproductive rights—having the ability to decide whether and when to have children—are important to women’s socioeconomic well-being and overall health. Research suggests that being able to make decisions about one’s own reproductive life and the timing of one’s entry into parenthood is associated with greater relationship stability and satisfaction ( National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy 2008 ), more work experience among women ( Buckles 2008 ), and increased wages and average career earnings ( Miller 2011 ). In addition, the ability to control the timing and size of one’s family can have a significant effect on whether a young woman attends and completes college ( Buckles 2008 ; Hock 2007 ). Given that a postsecondary degree considerably increases earnings ( Gault, Reichlin, and Román 2014 ), the ability to make family planning choices could mean the difference between women being stuck at poverty-level wages or achieving long-term financial security.

In recent years, policies affecting women’s reproductive rights in the United States have substantially changed at both the federal and state levels. The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) increased access to preventive women’s health services and contraceptive methods and counseling for millions of women ( Burke and Simmons 2014 ), and facilitated states’ ability to expand Medicaid family planning services. At the same time, legal limitations to women’s reproductive rights have increased in states across the country, making it harder for women to access the reproductive health services and information they need ( Guttmacher Institute 2015a ; NARAL Pro-Choice America and NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation 2015 ). In the first quarter of 2015 alone, state legislators introduced a total of 332 provisions to restrict access to abortion services; by April 2015, 53 of these provisions had been approved by a legislative chamber and nine had been enacted ( Guttmacher Institute 2015a ).

This report provides information on a range of policies related to women’s reproductive health and rights. It examines abortion, contraception, the access of individuals in same-sex couples to full parental rights, infertility, and sex education. It also presents data on fertility and natality—including infant mortality—and highlights disparities in women’s reproductive rights by race and ethnicity. In addition, the report examines recent shifts in federal and state policies related to reproductive rights. It explores the decision of some states to expand Medicaid coverage under the ACA, as well as state policies to extend eligibility for Medicaid family planning services. It also reviews the recognition of same-sex marriage in a growing majority of states across the nation ( National Center for Lesbian Rights 2015 )—a change that has profound implications for the ability of same-sex couples to create the families they desire.

Best and Worst States on Women’s Reproductive Rights

The reproductive rights composite index includes nine component indicators of women’s reproductive rights: mandatory parental consent or notification laws for minors receiving abortions, waiting periods for abortions, restrictions on public funding for abortions, the percent of women living in counties with at least one abortion provider, pro-choice governors or legislatures, Medicaid expansion or state Medicaid family planning eligibility expansions, coverage of infertility treatments, same-sex marriage or second-parent adoption for individuals in a same-sex relationship, and mandatory sex education. States receive composite scores and corresponding grades based on their combined performance on these indicators, with higher scores reflecting a stronger performance and receiving higher letter grades ( Table 5.1 ). For information on how composite scores and grades were determined, see  methodology .

• Oregon has the highest score on the composite reproductive rights index. It does not require parental consent or notification or waiting periods for abortion; provides public funding to poor women for abortion; has 78 percent of women living in counties with abortion providers; has a pro-choice Governor, Senate, and House of Representatives; has adopted the expansion of Medicaid coverage under the ACA of up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line and enacted a state Medicaid family planning eligibility expansion; recognizes same-sex marriage; and requires schools to provide sex education. Oregon does not, however, require insurance companies to cover infertility treatments. The state’s top ranking is a substantial improvement since the 2004 Status of Women in the States report, when it ranked 19th in the nation.
• The worst-ranking state for reproductive rights is South Dakota. It requires parental consent or notification and waiting periods for abortion, does not provide public funding to poor women for abortion, has just 23 percent of women living in counties with abortion providers, does not have a pro-choice state government, has not adopted the overall Medicaid expansion or expanded eligibility for Medicaid family planning services, does not require insurance companies to cover infertility treatments, does not recognize same-sex marriage or allow second-parent adoption for same-sex couples, and does not require schools to provide mandatory sex education. In the 2004 Status of Women in the States report, South Dakota ranked second to last.
• In general, reproductive rights are strongest in the Mid-Atlantic region, New England, and the West. In addition to Oregon, the top ten jurisdictions include California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, and Washington.
• The South and Midwest fare the worst on the reproductive rights composite index. In addition to South Dakota, five Midwestern states—Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Nebraska—are among the ten lowest-ranking states. Three Southern states are also a part of this group: Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee. Idaho also ranks in the bottom ten.
• The top grade for reproductive rights is an A-, which was awarded to the District of Columbia and seven states: Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Vermont. The four lowest-ranking states—South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Idaho —all received an F (for information on how grades were determined, see methodology ).

Between the publication of the 2004 Status of Women in the States report and this report, states overall made nominal progress on two indicators and declined or stayed the same on five others. 1

What Has Improved

• In October 2014, 12 states required insurance companies to provide coverage of infertility treatments, compared with just nine states in 2004. The number of states that required insurance companies to offer policyholders at least one package with coverage of infertility treatments, however, declined from five states in 2004 to two in 2014 ( IWPR 2004 ; National Conference of State Legislatures 2014 ).
• Between 2004 and 2015, the percentage of women living in counties with at least one abortion provider declined in 22 states, increased in 24 states, and stayed the same in four states and the District of Columbia ( IWPR 2004 ; Table 5.1 ).

What Has Worsened or Stayed the Same

• In 2015, 30 states had statutes requiring waiting periods for abortions—which mandate that a physician cannot perform an abortion until a certain number of hours after the patient is notified of her options in dealing with a pregnancy—compared with 26 states in 2004 ( Table 5.1 ; IWPR 2004 ). 2
• Between 2004 and 2015, the share of public officials—including the Governor (or mayor for the District of Columbia) and state legislators (or city council members for the District of Columbia)—who were pro-choice increased in 14 states and decreased in 22 states. The share of pro-choice officials stayed the same in the other 14 states and the District of Columbia ( IWPR 2004 ; Table 5.1 ).
• The number of jurisdictions with laws on the books preventing minors from accessing abortion without parental consent or notification (43) stayed the same between 2004 and 2015 ( Guttmacher Institute 2004a ; Table 5.1 ).
• The number of states (17) that provide public funding for all or most medically necessary abortions—typically defined to protect the woman’s physical or mental health ( Kaiser Family Foundation 2014b )—for Medicaid enrollees stayed the same between 2004 and 2015 ( Guttmacher Institute 2004b ; Table 5.1 ).
• Between 2004 and 2015, the number of jurisdictions that required schools to provide mandatory sex education (23) remained the same ( Guttmacher Institute 2004c ; Table 5.1 ).

In the United States, the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade established the legal right to abortion. State legislative and executive bodies nonetheless continue to battle over legislation related to access to abortion, including parental consent and notification and mandatory waiting periods ( Guttmacher Institute 2015b ). In addition, public funding for abortion remains a contested issue in many states: federal law has banned the use of federal funds for most abortions since 1977, and currently does not allow the use of federal funds for abortion unless the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest or the woman’s life is in danger ( Boonstra 2013 ). The Affordable Care Act of 2010 reinforces these restrictions, but state Medicaid programs have the option to cover abortion in other circumstances using only state and no federal funds ( Salganicoff et al. 2014 ).

State legislative efforts to limit access to abortion have become commonplace. In 2013 and 2014, a broad range of legislation was introduced and passed, including bills requiring women to have an ultrasound before obtaining an abortion, stringent regulatory measures targeting abortion providers, bans or restrictions preventing women from obtaining health insurance coverage for abortion, and bans on abortion at later stages of pregnancy ( National Women’s Law Center 2014a and 2014b ).

• Twenty-six of the 30 states that as of March 2015 had statutes requiring mandatory waiting periods for obtaining an abortion enforced these statutes, with waiting periods that ranged from 18 to 72 hours ( Guttmacher Institute 2015b ). In Delaware, Massachusetts, Montana, and Tennessee, the legislation remained part of the statutory code but was not enforced.
• As of March 2015, 43 states had parental consent or notification laws—which require parents of a minor seeking an abortion to consent to the procedure or be notified—and 38 of the 43 enforced these laws. Among these 38 states, 12 enforced the notification of parents and 21 enforced parental consent. Five states—Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming—enforced both parental consent and notification for minors seeking to undergo an abortion procedure ( Guttmacher Institute 2015b ).
• Seventeen states as of March 2015 fund abortions for low-income women who were eligible for Medicaid in all or most medically necessary circumstances. In 27 states and the District of Columbia, state funding for abortions is available only in situations where the women’s life is in danger or the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest ( Guttmacher Institute 2015b ). In five states—Indiana, Mississippi, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin—state Medicaid funds can be used to pay for abortions in situations where the woman’s life is endangered, when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, or when there is a threat to the woman’s physical health or a fetal anomaly. In South Dakota, state Medicaid funds can be used to pay for abortions only when the woman’s life is endangered ( Guttmacher Institute 2015b ).
• As of 2011—the most recent year for which data are available—the percentage of women aged 15–44 who lived in counties with an abortion provider ranged across states from a low of four percent in Wyoming to a high of 100 percent in the District of Columbia and Hawaii. In the bottom five states—Wyoming, Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, and South Dakota—fewer than one in four women lived in counties with at least one provider. In the top eight jurisdictions—the District of Columbia, Hawaii, California, Connecticut, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts—more than 90 percent of women lived in counties with at least one abortion provider ( Guttmacher Institute 2014 ).
• As of December 2014, the governor and majority of state legislators in 21 states were anti-choice (NARAL Pro-Choice America and NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation 2015). In six jurisdictions—including California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Oregon, and Vermont—the governor (or in the case of the District of Columbia, the mayor) and the majority of legislators (city council for the District of Columbia) were pro-choice and would not support restrictions on abortion rights. In the remaining states, the government was mixed.

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has expanded women’s access to contraception in several ways, including by requiring health care insurers to cover contraceptive counseling and services and all FDA-approved contraceptive methods without any out-of-pocket costs to patients ( U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2014 ). This change is particularly significant for lower-income women who often struggle with the financial burden associated with purchasing contraception on a regular basis ( Center for Reproductive Rights 2012 ). According to the Guttmacher Institute, the average cost of a year’s supply of birth control pills is the equivalent of 51 hours of work for a woman making the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour ( Sonfield 2014 ). One national study estimates that for uninsured women, the average cost of these pills over a year ($370) is 68 percent of their annual out-of-pocket expenditures for health care services ( Liang, Grossman, and Phillips 2011 ).

Prior to the ACA, state contraceptive equity laws were the only legal protections ensuring that women could access affordable contraceptives as easily as they could other prescription drugs ( Guttmacher Institute 2015c ). These laws required state-regulated plans providing coverage for prescription medications to do the same for contraceptive drugs and devices ( National Women’s Law Center 2012 ). Only 28 states, however, required full or partial contraceptive coverage; the remaining states and the District of Columbia had no such legal protection safeguarding access to affordable contraception ( Guttmacher Institute 2015c ). The ACA has significantly increased the proportion of women who have access to contraception at no cost: one study focusing on about 900 women who had private health insurance and used a prescription contraceptive method found that between the fall of 2012 (before the ACA’s contraceptive coverage requirement took effect for most women) and the spring of 2014, the percentage of women paying zero dollars out of pocket for oral contraception increased from 15 to 67 percent ( Sonfield et al. 2015 ).

The ACA’s contraceptive requirement, however, has some notable exceptions. Some religious organizations, such as churches and other houses of worship, are exempt from the requirement to include birth control in their health insurance plans ( National Women’s Law Center 2015 ). An “accommodation” is also available to religiously-affiliated nonprofit organizations that certify their religious objections to the health insurance carrier or third party administrator, or notify the Department of Health and Human Services of their objection; those who qualify for the accommodation do not have to cover contraceptives for their female employees, but these employees can still get birth control coverage directly from the insurance company ( National Women’s Law Center 2015 ; Sobel, Salganicoff, and Kurani 2015 ). In addition, “grandfathered” health plans that existed prior to the ACA are temporarily exempt from the requirement to provide contraceptive coverage through employer-sponsored health plans, except in states with a contraceptive equity law that already requires coverage (although contraceptive equity laws do not require insurers to provide contraceptive coverage without cost sharing; National Women’s Law Center 2012 ). 3  A Supreme Court decision, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., has also expanded allowable exemptions to certain family-owned, “closely held” corporations with religious objections to contraception ( Dreweke 2014 ; National Women’s Law Center 2015 ). The ruling does not supersede state contraceptive equity laws, but it does mean that employees of firms such as Hobby Lobby, which self-insures its employees and therefore is subject only to federal law, may lose their coverage of contraceptive drugs and services ( Rovner 2014 ).

While the ACA expands access to contraception for many women, some have expressed concern that insurance-related delays in access or denials of a preferred method of contraception may undermine the law’s intent to eliminate barriers to all FDA-approved methods of contraception ( Armstrong 2013 ). Insurers often use “medical management techniques”—such as limiting quantity and/or supply or requiring provider authorization before providing a drug or service—that can deter patients from using certain services and shape the course of treatment. While such practices, in some circumstances, can improve efficiency and save costs, they can also prevent or delay access to services. When insurers adopt practices that limit women’s options for contraception, some women may be left without access to the method that works best for them ( Armstrong 2013 ). One recent report that reviewed the insurance plan coverage policies of 20 insurance carriers in five states found that while most carriers are complying with the ACA’s contraceptive provision, there exists some variation in how the guidelines for contraceptive coverage issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are interpreted; as a result, not all carriers cover all contraceptive methods without cost-sharing ( Sobel, Salganicoff, and Kurani 2015 ). To help ensure that women have access to the full range of contraceptive methods without cost-sharing, the state of California passed a post-ACA contraceptive coverage law (SB 1053) that limits medical management as applied to contraception and goes beyond federal law in prohibiting non-grandfathered and Medi-Cal plans from instituting cost-sharing requirements or imposing restrictions or delays in providing contraceptive benefits ( Sobel, Salganicoff, and Kurani 2015 ).

Emergency contraception—birth control that can be taken up to several days after unprotected sex, contraceptive failure, or sexual assault—can prevent unwanted pregnancies and allow women to maintain control over the timing and size of their families. Plan B—approved for use in the United States in 1999—was the first oral form of emergency contraception to be available, but others were subsequently introduced ( Kaiser Family Foundation 2014c ). The Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive provision that requires all new private health plans to cover all contraceptive drugs and devices prescribed to patients without cost-sharing includes emergency contraception ( Kaiser Family Foundation 2014c ).

State legislatures have taken different approaches to addressing the issue of emergency contraception. Some have sought to restrict access by excluding it from state Medicaid family planning eligibility expansions or contraceptive coverage mandates, or by allowing some pharmacists or pharmacies to refuse to provide contraceptive services ( Guttmacher Institute 2015d ). Others have expanded access by requiring emergency rooms to provide information about emergency contraception to sexual assault victims, requiring emergency rooms to dispense emergency contraception to sexual assault victims who request it, allowing women to obtain emergency contraception without a doctor’s prescription, or directing pharmacies or pharmacists to fill all valid prescriptions ( Guttmacher Institute 2015d ). Public health and educational initiatives have led to an increase in awareness and use of emergency contraception ( Kaiser Family Foundation 2014c ); one study that analyzed data from the National Survey of Family Growth found that in 2006–2010, 11 percent of sexually experienced women aged 15 to 44 reported having ever used emergency contraception pills, compared with 4 percent in 2002 ( Daniels, Jones, and Abma 2013 ).

Still, women continue to encounter barriers to accessing emergency contraception. For example, although most women have heard of emergency contraception, some are not aware of its existence ( Kaiser Family Foundation 2014c ), In addition, federal law requires women of all ages to have a prescription to obtain ella, the most effective form of emergency contraception for women who are overweight or obese; Plan B and generic forms of emergency contraception can be purchased over-the-counter ( Kaiser Family Foundation 2014c ). Another barrier is that health care providers also do not always discuss emergency contraception with women in clinical settings, leaving some women without the information they need ( Kaiser Family Foundation 2014c ). One study of 180 pharmacies in 29 states also found that progestin-based EC pills are often not stocked on store shelves or held behind the counter due to their high cost ( American Society for Emergency Contraception 2014 ).

Native American Women and Emergency Contraception

Research indicates that for many Native American women, emergency contraception may be particularly difficult to access. This lack of access represents a serious concern for indigenous communities, especially given that Native American women experience higher levels of sexual assault than women of other races and ethnicities ( Breiding et al. 2014 ; Kingfisher, Asetoyer, and Provost 2012 ). One study that surveyed 40 Indian Health Service (IHS) pharmacies found that only 10 percent had Plan B available over the counter; at 37.5 percent of the pharmacies surveyed, an alternative form of emergency contraception was offered, and the rest had no emergency contraception at all ( Gattozzi 2008 ; Asetoyer, Luluquisen, and Millis 2009 ). Many Native American women who live on reservations face significant barriers to accessing emergency contraception through a commercial pharmacy outside of their reservation ( Kingfisher, Asetoyer, and Provost 2012 ), including geographic constraints (having to travel a great distance to find a pharmacy that provides emergency contraception) and financial obstacles. Expanding access to emergency contraception for Native American women and others who may lack access is integral to improving women’s overall well-being and securing their reproductive rights.

In addition to requiring most health insurers to cover contraceptive counseling and services and all FDA-approved contraceptive methods, the Affordable Care Act has increased women’s access to contraception by expanding the number of people who have health insurance coverage. The ACA has dramatically reduced rates of uninsurance among women aged 18 to 24 by allowing adult children to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans until the age of 26; between 2008 and 2014, the percentage of women aged 18 to 24 without health insurance decreased from 24.9 to 15.9 percent. During this time period, uninsurance rates for women of all ages dropped about 18 percent, from 13.0 percent of women lacking insurance in 2008 to 10.6 percent in the first nine months of 2014 ( Martinez and Cohen 2009 and 2015 ). Complete data reflecting changes in health insurance for women following the ACA are not yet available.

The ACA has also increased the number of people with health insurance through changes to Medicaid, a public health coverage program for low-income individuals. To help those who may have struggled in the past to afford insurance, the ACA seeks to expand Medicaid eligibility to all individuals under age 65 who are not eligible for Medicare and have incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line (individuals were previously eligible only if they were pregnant, the parent of a dependent child, 65 years of age or older, or disabled, in addition to meeting income requirements; the National Conference of State Legislatures 2011 ). 4  This change increases the number of women who are eligible to receive family planning services, along with other health care services; however, states can opt out of this Medicaid expansion. As of April 2015, 29 states and the District of Columbia had chosen to adopt the Medicaid expansion, and five were in the process of deciding whether to do so ( Kaiser Family Foundation 2015 ).

In addition to the overall Medicaid expansion, the ACA provides states with a new pathway to expand eligibility for family planning coverage through changes to their state Medicaid program. Before the ACA, states could expand their programs by obtaining a waiver of federal policy from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ( Guttmacher Institute 2015e ). States interested in expanding family planning through Medicaid can now either complete the process through a waiver from the federal government (which is a temporary solution), or through an expedited option of a State Plan Amendment, which is a permanent change to the state’s Medicaid program ( Guttmacher Institute 2015e ).

• As of April 2015, 28 states had extended family planning services to individuals who are otherwise ineligible, either through a waiver or through a State Plan Amendment (including Texas, which had an expansion funded solely by the state). The income ceiling among states that have expanded their programs ranged from a low of 105 percent of the federal poverty line in Virginia (where the expansion includes those losing postpartum coverage) to a high of 306 percent of the federal poverty line in Wisconsin ( Guttmacher Institute 2015e ).
• Of the 28 states that expanded eligibility for family planning services through Medicaid, 25 states provided family planning benefits to individuals based on income, with most of these states having an income ceiling at or near 200 percent of the federal poverty line. One state (Florida) provided these benefits to women who lose Medicaid coverage for any reason, rather than basing eligibility only on income, and Rhode Island and Wyoming provided them only if a woman loses coverage postpartum ( Guttmacher Institute 2015e ).
• Twenty states defined the eligible population for Medicaid coverage of family planning services to include individuals who are younger than 19 years old. Three states—Georgia, Missouri, and Pennsylvania—included individuals who are 18 years old but not those who are younger than 18 ( Guttmacher Institute 2015e ).
• As of April 2015, 16 states had both expanded Medicaid overall and expanded Medicaid family planning eligibility ( Guttmacher Institute 2015e ; Kaiser Family Foundation 2015 ). Fourteen states and the District of Columbia had expanded Medicaid overall but did not have a family planning eligibility expansion, and 13 states had enacted a family planning expansion but had not adopted the Medicaid expansion. Eight states—Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah—had neither expanded Medicaid overall nor enacted a state family planning expansion ( Table 5.1 ).

Infertility treatments can increase the reproductive choices of women and men, but they are often prohibitively expensive, especially when they are not covered by insurance. As of June 2014, the legislatures of 12 states—Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and West Virginia—had passed measures requiring insurance companies to cover infertility treatments. 5  In another two states—California and Texas—insurance companies had to offer infertility coverage to their policy holders ( National Conference of State Legislatures 2015 ). 6

Research has shown that sex education is critical to giving young women and men the knowledge they need to make informed decisions about their sexual activity and to avoid unwanted pregnancy and disease ( Douglas 2007 ). In 22 states and the District of Columbia, schools are required to provide sex education. 7  One of these states, Tennessee, requires schools to provide sex education if the pregnancy rate among 15- to 17-year-olds is 19.5 per 1,000 or higher. Of the 23 jurisdictions with a statute on the books requiring sex education, all but two—Mississippi and North Dakota— also require HIV education. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia require that information about contraception be included in the curricula, and 37 states require that information regarding abstinence be included ( Guttmacher Institute 2015f ).

The laws that shape the ability of individuals in same-sex couples to form the families they want have changed substantially in recent years. Because there is no federal law that guarantees same-sex couples the same parenthood rights afforded to different-sex married couples, state courts have held considerable power to determine what legally constitutes lesbian and gay families. In the past, they have exercised this power in many ways, including by denying lesbian and gay individuals the right to legally adopt their partners’ children or granting them this right through second-parent adoption, which provides legal rights to second parents in same-sex relationships that are automatically available to biological parents. These rights include (but are not limited to) custodial rights in the case of divorce or death and the right to make health care decisions for the child ( Movement Advancement Project, Family Equality Council, and Center for American Progress 2011 and 2012 ).

At the time IWPR’s 2004 Status of Women in the States report was published, second-parent adoption represented the only option for many lesbian and gay individuals seeking to be legal co-parents of their children. Since then, the recognition of marriage for same-sex couples in 37 states and the District of Columbia, whether by legislation or pursuant to a state or federal court ruling ( National Center for Lesbian Rights 2015 ), has opened up new options for same-sex couples. It has given married same-sex couples who have a child together the same parental rights as married different-sex couples. 8  In addition, the recognition of same-sex marriage has made stepparent adoption—a legal process available to married couples where the nonbiological parent adopts the child or children of their spouse—a possibility for many individuals in same-sex couples who marry after one or both partners has a child or children.

As of April 2015, same-sex couples had access to marriage statewide in 37 states and the District of Columbia; 9  in an additional four states, same-sex couples had access to second-parent or stepparent adoption in certain counties (which had either authorized gay marriage or allowed second-parent adoption, though no statewide legislation or appellate court decision expressly allowing it was in place). 10  Nine states do not allow second-parent adoption for same-sex couples or same-sex marriage. Two states that prohibit same-sex marriage have laws that specifically ban second-parent adoption for all couples (Nebraska and Ohio). One state that bans same-sex marriage—Mississippi—specifically prohibits second-parent adoption for same-sex couples but allows it for different-sex couples ( National Center for Lesbian Rights 2014 ).

LGBT Reproductive Rights

The United States has a long and complicated history of debating who deserves to become a parent, and LGBT individuals have often been at the center of this debate. While the traditional conception of the family is shifting, and LGBT reproductive rights are gaining greater recognition, many LGBT individuals still face challenges in their paths to parenthood. These challenges range from finding a culturally competent health care provider to outright discrimination or legal prohibitions in pursuing adoption, foster parenting, surrogacy, or donor insemination ( Cooper and Cates 2006 ; Lambda Legal 2015 ).

• An estimated 122,000 same-sex couples are raising children under the age of 18 in the United States. Married same-sex couples are considerably more likely to be raising children than unmarried same-sex couples (27 percent compared with 15 percent; Gates 2015 ).
• While same-sex couples are less likely to be raising children than different-sex couples, same-sex couples are nearly three times as likely to be raising an adopted or foster child (4.0 percent compared with 1.4 percent; Gates 2015 ). Still, the majority of children of same-sex couples are biologically related to one of their parents (61 percent, compared with 90 percent of children of different-sex couples).
• More than one-third (35 percent) of women of color in same-sex couples are raising a child under the age of 18, compared with 24 percent of white women in same-sex couples ( Gates 2015 ). Seventy-one percent of same-sex married couples and 81 percent of same-sex unmarried couples raising children under the age of 18 are female.
• Six states—California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin—prohibit discrimination against LGBT parents who want to foster a child. One state, Nebraska, restricts fostering by LGBT parents. Forty-three states and the District of Columbia are silent on the issue ( Movement Advancement Project 2015 ).
• In 35 states and the District of Columbia, LGBT parents can petition for joint adoption statewide. In three states—Louisiana, Michigan, and Mississippi—same-sex couples face legal restrictions when petitioning for joint adoption. In 12 states, the status of joint adoption for same-sex couples is uncertain ( Movement Advancement Project 2015 )

Women’s Fertility

The fertility rate for women in the United States has declined in recent years, due in part to women’s tendency to marry and give birth later in life. In 2013, the median age for women at the time of their first marriage was 26.6 years, up from 20.3 years in 1960 ( U.S. Census Bureau 2013 ; Cohn et al. 2011 ). In 2013, the mean age for women at the time of their first birth was 26.0 years, compared with 21.4 years in 1970 ( Martin et al. 2015a ; Mathews and Brady 2009 ).

In 2013, the fertility rate was 62.5 live births per 1,000 women aged 15–44 in the United States. This represents a significant decline since 1960, when the fertility rate was 118.0 births per 1,000 ( Martin et al. 2015a ). In the ten-year period between 2003 and 2013, the fertility rate among women aged 15–44 declined from 66.1 to 62.5 births per 1,000 women ( Martin et al. 2015a ).

• New Hampshire has the lowest fertility rate in the nation among women aged 15–44 at 50.8 live births per 1,000, followed by Vermont at 51.4 per 1,000 and Rhode Island at 51.6 per 1,000. In addition to these three states, five other states in the Northeast are among the ten jurisdictions with the lowest fertility rates: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. The District of Columbia and Oregon are also among the ten jurisdictions with the lowest fertility rates ( Martin et al. 2015a ).
• Utah has the highest fertility rate in the nation at 80.9 live births per 1,000, with South Dakota (78.1 per 1,000) and Alaska (77.8 per 1,000) close behind. Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas are also among the ten states with the highest fertility rates ( Martin et al. 2015a ).

Women who receive prenatal care throughout their pregnancy are, in general, more likely to deliver healthy babies ( U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2009 ). In the United States in 2011, 84 percent of women began receiving prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy, which was a similar proportion to 2001, when 83 percent of all mothers received prenatal care this early in their pregnancy. Between 2001 and 2011, the percentage of women beginning prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy has increased among Native American women (a 12 percentage point gain, from 69 to 81 percent). Black and Hispanic women have each experienced a seven percentage point gain (from 74 to 81 percent for black women and from 76 to 83 percent for Hispanic women). The percentage of Asian/Pacific Islander women beginning prenatal care in the first trimester has stayed the same (84 percent), and among white women the percentage of women receiving early prenatal care declined from 89 to 86 percent ( IWPR 2004 ; Table 5.2 ).

Pregnant women of color are more likely than white women to begin prenatal care toward the end of their pregnancies, or to not receive it at all. One study that analyzed natality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that between 2007 and 2013, only 4.4 percent of white women nationwide received late (not beginning until the third trimester) or no prenatal care, compared with 5.4 percent of Asian/Pacific Islander women, 7.6 percent of Hispanic women, 10.0 percent of black women, and 11.3 percent of Native American women ( Child Trends 2014 ).

Low birth weight is a health concern in states across the nation. Nationally, eight percent of babies born in the United States in 2013 had low birth weight (less than five pounds, eight ounces; Martin et al. 2015b). Among the largest racial and ethnic groups, non-Hispanic black women were the most likely to have low-birth weight babies (13.1percent), followed by Asian/Pacific Islander women (8.3 percent), Native American women (7.5 percent), Hispanic women (7.1 percent), and white women (7.0 percent; Martin et al. 2015a ).

Nationwide, the percent of babies with low birth weight has increased slightly, from 7.7 percent of babies in 2001 to 8.0 percent in 2013. Among blacks, the percent of babies born with low birth weight stayed the same (13.1 percent in both years), while among whites and Native Americans it increased a bit (from 6.8 to 7.0 percent for whites and 7.3 to 7.5 percent for Native Americans). Among Hispanics and Asian/Pacific Islanders, the percent of babies with low birth weight increased more substantially (from 6.5 to 7.1 percent for Hispanics and from 7.5 to 8.3 percent for Asian/Pacific Islanders; IWPR 2004 and Table 5.2 ).

States differ in their proportions of babies born with low birth weight.

• Alaska has the lowest proportion of babies born with low birth weights at 5.8 percent, followed by Oregon and South Dakota (6.3 percent each). California, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Vermont, and Washington are also in the best 11 states (with New Hampshire and California tied for 10 th place ( Appendix Table B5.1 ).
• Mississippi has the largest proportion of babies born with low birth weight at 11.5 percent, approximately twice the rate of the best-ranking state, Alaska. In general, states in the South have comparatively high proportions of babies born with low birth weight: Alabama, Arkansas, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia all rank in the bottom twelve. Colorado (which ties with Arkansas and North Carolina for 40 th place) and New Mexico are also a part of this group ( Appendix Table B5.1 ).

In the United States overall, infant deaths occur at a rate of 6.0 per 1,000 live births. Among women of the largest racial and ethnic groups, Asian/Pacific Islander women (4.1 per 1,000 live births), white women (5.0 per 1,000 live births), and Hispanic women (5.1 per 1,000 live births) have the lowest rates of infant mortality, while black women and Native American women have the highest rates (11.2 and 8.4 per 1,000 live births, respectively; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2013 ).

Between 2001 and 2012, the infant mortality rate in the United States decreased from 6.8 to 6.0 per 1,000 live births. These gains were experienced across all racial and ethnic groups. Rates of infant mortality among white women decreased from 5.7 to 5.0 per 1,000 births, from 13.5 to 11.2 among black women, from 9.7 to 8.4 among Native American women, from 5.4 to 5.1 among Hispanic women, and from 4.7 to 4.1 per 1,000 births among Asian/Pacific Islander women ( IWPR 2004 ; Table 5.2 ).

Infant mortality rates vary across states.

• New Hampshire and Massachusetts have the lowest infant mortality rates in the nation, at 4.2 per 1,000, followed by Vermont (4.3 per 1,000). Other states in the top eleven are geographically dispersed: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, and Utah (the rates in both Hawaii and New York are 5.0 per 1,000; Appendix Table B5.2 ).
• Alabama has the highest infant mortality rate in the nation, at 9.0 per 1,000 live births, more than double the rate of the best-ranking states. Many states with the lowest rankings are in the South: in addition to Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina are in the bottom ten. The District of Columbia, Delaware, Ohio, Oklahoma, and South Dakota are also in this group ( Appendix Table B5.2 ).

Notes: Data for mothers beginning prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy are for 2011. Data for infant mortality rate are for 2012. Data for percent of low birth-weight babies are for 2013. For data on prenatal care and low birth-weight, whites and blacks are non-Hispanic; other racial groups include Hispanics. For data on infant mortality, all racial categories are non-Hispanic. Hispanics may be of any race or two or more races.

Source: iwpr compilation of data from the centers for disease control and prevention 2012 a , centers for disease control and prevention 2013 b , and hamilton et al. 2014 c ..

Women’s status in the area of reproductive rights has seen minor gains, as well as substantial setbacks, since the publication of IWPR’s 2004 Status of Women in the States report. The rate of infant mortality has declined, states across the nation have recognized same-sex marriage, and many states have expanded their Medicaid programs under the ACA, increasing women’s access to reproductive health services. Yet, the number of states requiring mandatory waiting periods for abortion has increased, and the percentage of low birth weight babies has gone up. While the implementation of the Affordable Care Act has changed the landscape of reproductive health care for women by granting more women access to much needed reproductive and family planning services, some women still face barriers to obtaining the services they need, and women’s reproductive rights continue to be contested in state legislatures across the nation. Increasing access to reproductive rights and resources will help to advance women’s health, economic security, and overall well-being.

Methodology

1 Two additional indicators examined in this report are: 1) Medicaid expansion and state Medicaid family planning eligibility expansions, which replaces an indicator in IWPR’s previous Status of Women in the States reports on state contraceptive coverage laws; and 2) same-sex marriage or second-parent adoption, which modifies an indicator on second-parent adoption in previous IWPR Status of Women in the States reports. For more on these changes, see Appendix A5 and the sections on Medicaid expansions and on same-sex marriage and second-parent adoption below.

2 An additional four states in 2015 had legislation requiring waiting periods for abortions that was part of the statutory code but not enforced.

3 Women living in states without a contraceptive equity law must wait until their private health plan loses its grandfathered status to gain full access to no-cost contraceptive coverage ( National Women’s Law Center 2012 ).

4 Federal law allows for the expansion of Medicaid to individuals with incomes at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty line. The law also includes a five percent “income disregard,” which effectively makes the limit 138 percent of poverty (Center for Mississippi Health Policy 2012).

5 An additional state, Louisiana, prohibits the exclusion of coverage for a medical condition that would otherwise be covered solely because the condition results in infertility.

6 A mandate to cover infertility treatments requires health insurance plans sold by licensed insurers to include coverage for these treatments. A mandate to offer coverage means that the plans must provide this coverage, but the person buying the policy does not have to elect coverage for this benefit ( Kaiser Family Foundation 2014a ).

7 This includes states requiring sex education at any grade level (K-12).

8 Even in states where same-sex marriage is recognized, in some circumstances there may still be obstacles to consistent legal recognition of nonbiological parents even if they are married to the birth parent (Ming Wong, National Center for Lesbian Rights, personal communication, April 10, 2015).

9 In Alabama, a federal district court ruled the state ban on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional in January 2015. Both the 11 th Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. Supreme Court declined to impose a stay on the court’s order while on appeal. However, the Alabama Supreme Court ordered probate judges in the state to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Couples were seeking a class-action suit in the state’s federal court as of April 2015.

10 Of these four states, three (Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) did not recognize same-sex marriage, but allowed second-parent adoption in certain counties. In one state—Missouri—same-sex couples can marry in certain counties but second-parent adoption is not available to unmarried same-sex couples.

• < Previous

Home > SCRIPPS > SCRIPPS_STUDENT > SCRIPPS_THESES > 1516

Scripps Senior Theses

Beyond pro-life vs. pro-choice: reproductive rights for women of color and low-income women.

Sabrina Wu Follow

Graduation Year

Document type.

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Second Department

W.M. Keck Science Department

Elise Ferree

Alyssa Newman

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont .

In today’s debate over abortion, there are a multitude of additional factors to consider when restricting abortion for women of color and low-income women. The binary pro-life vs. pro-choice debate may seem like two clear-cut opposing sides, and many people find themselves agreeing firmly on one stance. However, these terms seek to implicitly portray the other stance unfavorably. Pro-life seems to imply that opponents are anti-life, or even “pro-death” and pro-choice insinuates that the opposition is “anti-choice” or favors coercion. The debate marginalizes women of color, poor women, and women from other marginalized communities because it does not take into account pre-existing conditions, such as financial incapability, harmful environmental factors and lack of social support, that restrict them from real choice to decide whether to have a child or have an abortion. Firstly, it is important to understand the complex issue of abortion in its procedure, its implications and its history in the United States, as well as the consequences upon denial of abortion and the effects of returning to a pre-Roe vs. Woe world. Abortion bans objectively affect low-income and women of color because of higher numbers of unwanted pregnancies, spatial inequalities to abortion access and its implicated costs, language barriers, financial difficulties and situational obstacles such as incarceration or environmental factors. In opposition to today’s abortion bans, it is important to get rid of the bans, prioritize women's health and work to create long-term solutions to combat economically and socially coerced abortions. We should work to reduce reasons for abortion, instead of criminalizing the procedure.

Recommended Citation

Wu, Sabrina, "Beyond Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice: Reproductive Rights for Women of Color and Low-income Women" (2020). Scripps Senior Theses . 1516. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1516

This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

Since February 28, 2020

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS
• Colleges, Universities, and Library
• Schools, Programs, and Departments
• Disciplines

Author Corner

• Faculty Submission
• Student Submission
• Policies and Guidelines

Useful Links

• Claremont Colleges Library
• Claremont Colleges Digital Library

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Abortion — Thesis Statement for Abortion

Thesis Statement for Abortion

• Categories: Abortion Ethics

About this sample

Words: 515 |

Published: Mar 20, 2024

Words: 515 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

The pro-choice perspective, the pro-life perspective, ethical considerations, legal implications.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Social Issues Philosophy

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

3 pages / 1190 words

3 pages / 1295 words

4 pages / 1647 words

1 pages / 487 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Abortion

Abortion laws have been a contentious issue in many countries, with varying degrees of permissiveness and restrictiveness. This essay aims to analyze the current state of abortion laws by examining a selection of relevant [...]

Abortion has been a contentious issue for centuries and has sparked heated debate around the world. Women have been seeking abortions for various reasons such as medical, economic, social, and personal needs. However, despite [...]

Abortion is a highly controversial topic that has sparked intense debate and divided public opinion for decades. While some argue that it is a woman's right to choose, others believe that it is morally and ethically wrong. In [...]

Abortion has been a subject of intense debate and controversy, with impassioned arguments from both sides. However, amidst the fervent discourse, it is crucial to recognize the multifaceted impact of legalizing abortion. The [...]

Adopting a pro-choice perspective on abortion is crucial for upholding women's bodily autonomy, promoting their reproductive rights, and ensuring their overall well-being. By recognizing the detrimental consequences of [...]

Abortion is a highly controversial and divisive topic that has sparked passionate debates for decades. From moral and ethical considerations to legal and political implications, the issue of abortion is complex and multifaceted, [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• Architecture and Design
• Asian and Pacific Studies
• Business and Economics
• Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Computer Sciences
• Cultural Studies
• Engineering
• General Interest
• Geosciences
• Industrial Chemistry
• Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Library and Information Science, Book Studies
• Life Sciences
• Linguistics and Semiotics
• Literary Studies
• Materials Sciences
• Mathematics
• Social Sciences
• Sports and Recreation
• Theology and Religion
• Publish your article
• The role of authors
• Promoting your article
• Abstracting & indexing
• Publishing Ethics
• Why publish with De Gruyter
• How to publish with De Gruyter
• Our book series
• Our subject areas
• Your digital product at De Gruyter
• Contribute to our reference works
• Product information
• Tools & resources
• Product Information
• Promotional Materials
• Orders and Inquiries
• FAQ for Library Suppliers and Book Sellers
• Repository Policy
• Free access policy
• Open Access agreements
• Database portals
• For Authors
• Customer service
• People + Culture
• Journal Management
• How to join us
• Working at De Gruyter
• Mission & Vision
• De Gruyter Foundation
• De Gruyter Ebound
• Our Responsibility
• Partner publishers

Your purchase has been completed. Your documents are now available to view.

Women's Reproductive Rights: A literary perspective

Valentina Adami holds a PhD in English Studies from the University of Verona. She is Adjunct Professor of English language at the University of Verona and at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, and member of AIDEL (Associazione Italiana di Diritto e Letteratura), AIA (Associazione Italiana di Anglistica) and ESSE (European Society for the Study of English). Her fields of research are trauma studies; law, language and literature; bioethics, medicine and literature; ecolinguistics and ecocriticism. She has published various essays and two monographs: Trauma Studies and Literature: Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow as Trauma Fiction (Peter Lang, 2008) and Bioethics Through Literature: Margaret Atwood’s Cautionary Tales (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2011).

This paper examines the development of the concept of women’s reproductive rights in human rights treaties and conventions since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights , revealing how traditional human rights formulations are often male-centered and lack a gender-sensitive approach. Since feminist speculative fiction has anticipated many of the reproductive rights issues that we are facing today, the author claims that literary texts such as Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), P. D. James’s The Children of Men (1992) and Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army (2007) can enlighten contemporary debates on reproductive rights and contribute to the development of a universal ethics of human rights that takes into account the specificity of women’s rights.

About the author

©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston

• X / Twitter

Supplementary Materials

Please login or register with De Gruyter to order this product.

Journal and Issue

Articles in the same issue.

The United States Supreme Court ruling and women's reproductive rights - A position statement issued by The European Board and College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (EBCOG)

• PMID: 36334375
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ejogrb.2022.10.012

The judicial review by the Supreme Court of the United States on Roe v. Wade has fundamentally limited the ability of women to exercise choice and control of their sexual and reproductive rights in the United States. The global organisations are concerned that there remains a risk that women's rights will be diminished globally in future.

Keywords: Abortion access; Access; Autonomy; Contraception; EBCOG; Global health; Human rights; Illegal abortion; Reproductive health; Supreme Court; United Nations; United States; Women’s rights.

Copyright © 2022. Published by Elsevier B.V.

• Abortion, Induced*
• Abortion, Legal
• Gynecology*
• Obstetrics*
• Reproductive Rights
• Supreme Court Decisions
• United States
• Women's Rights