Reproductive Justice: An Introduction
Below is an excerpt from chapter 7 “Sexual And Reproductive Justice” of my book:
The Feminist Handbook:
“Typically, when thinking about reproduction, what comes to mind is biology—including conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and the prevention of diseases and disorders. When looking at reproduction from a feminist perspective, historically our focus has been primarily on abortion and our rights to access one. This chapter, however, will look at reproduction through a much broader lens. Instead of focusing primarily on the function of the reproduction system, or exclusively abortion rights, we will use a more holistic approach to look at how nonbiological issues can affect your reproductive choices, which include parenting and sexual expression (Ross and Solinger 2017). This chapter will focus on the role inequality plays, and how it affects your choices and decision making, and how public policies can limit or expand your options (Ross 2017). Sexual and reproductive justice is a feminist issue, because without the ability to control our reproduction, and express our sexuality safely and freely, we do not have equality. How do nonbiological factors influence our choices? When we make personal decisions, to what extent does the government, society, and our community support our decisions?
Reproductive and Sexual Oppression
Reproductive and sexual oppression refers to social, economic, and institutional strategies and policies that limit the reproductive ability and sexual autonomy of marginalized groups (ACRJ 2005). Below are some examples of historical and current policies and strategies that oppress and control marginalized women and their families:
The control of black women’s fertility and separation of families during slavery (ACRJ 2005)
Eugenics programs in the 1900s to limit and control “undesirable” populations, including Native Americans, people of color, Black women, immigrants, low income women, unmarried mothers, incarcerated, disabled, and mentally ill women.
Coerced contraceptive use and sterilization still occurs today (ACRJ 2005; Ko 2016).
Conversion therapies that attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation (ACRJ 2005)
Refusal by adoption agencies to allow LGBTQIA families to adopt or foster children
Separation of migrant families seeking refuge at the border, deporting the parents, and placing the children in the US foster care system
States that allow pharmacists to deny women contraception Pregnant and laboring incarcerated women kept in shackles (ACLU 2019) Legislation (the Hyde Amendment) that prohibits Medicaid from covering abortion services, except in cases of rape or incest. This legislation overwhelmingly affects low-income women.
Policies that contribute to reproductive and sexual oppression maintain the marginalized status of vulnerable groups. Many of these oppressive policies are dehumanizing; imagine trying to give birth to a child in jail while being shackled, followed by having your infant removed from your care before being able to hold them? Oppressive polices that separate parents from their children are human rights violations with lifelong consequences. Additionally, oppressive sexual and reproductive policies limit the agency of individuals and groups, preventing them from making important personal decisions for themselves and their families.
Addressing Reproductive and Sexual Oppression
Challenging reproductive oppression means making sure that everyone has access to the same resources, with the goal being that everyone has the social, political, and economic power to make healthy decisions about their gender, bodies, and sexuality (ACRJ 2005). Three feminist frameworks can be used to address reproductive and sexual oppression:
Reproductive and sexual health care
Sexual and reproductive rights
Reproductive and sexual justice
Reproductive and Sexual Justice
It’s not enough to have access to contraception and abortion, if your choices are limited because of circumstances and limited access to resources, as Camila’s story illustrated. The concept of reproductive justice was created by women of color, based on their lived experiences and their frustration with white feminist’s singular focus on abortion as the primary issue in terms of reproductive rights. Access to safe legal abortion can’t be divorced from other needs, such as education,
The concept, reproductive justice was created by women of color, based on their lived experiences, and frustration with White feminists’ singular focus on abortion as the primary issue in terms of reproductive rights. Access to safe, legal abortion, can’t be isolated from other needs such as education, good paying jobs, housing and safe neighborhoods. The framework shifts the focus away from the concept of “choice” in reproduction, to consider context. Sexual and reproductive justice are integrated within a human rights framework to ensure that rights are accessible to everyone. The framework of reproductive justice is intersectional and created to make sure that the differences between social groups don’t become barriers. (Ross & Solinger, 2017).
Reproductive justice goes beyond working towards accessibility, by addressing systemic reproductive oppression. Activists working within the reproductive justice movement work to connect your rights to access of services with a consideration of the ways that inequality may affect your access to services (Ahmed & Gamble, 2017).
Reproductive and Sexual Justice Values
The framework of Reproductive and Sexual Justice includes the following values (Ross & Solinger, 2017):
• Your right to have children
• Your right to not have children
• Your right to parent children in safe and healthy environments
• Your right to sexual autonomy and gender freedom”
The Intersection of Reproductive Justice (RJ)
& Critical Adoption Studies
When you bring RJ into adoption conversations, the center of gravity shifts:
from “Was adoption a good outcome?”
to “What conditions made separation likely, and what would it take for families to stay safely together?”
Being an adoptee means that we live in the “both/and” space. Meaning, we can love our adoptive family, and acknowledge that some adoptees needed to be separated from an abusive parent or unsafe environment, and by using an RJ and critical adoption studies lens, we have the framework to ask questions like: Were people sufficiently supported to have real options?
What RJ helps you see in adoption discourse
RJ is especially useful because adoption is often discussed as a private, individual story. RJ insists on examining the conditions surrounding pregnancy, parenting, and family stability.
RJ brings attention to:
Material resources: housing, healthcare, childcare, income, disability supports, and community safety (the difference between “choice” and constraint).
Coercion and pressure: how stigma, lack of support, institutional power, or crisis can shape “voluntary” decisions.
State power over families: how systems decide which families are supported, surveilled, separated, or declared “unfit.”
This overlaps with CAS in a big way: both lenses ask how adoption is shaped by poverty, racism, economic inequality, and political violence, rather than treating adoption demand/supply as natural (Briggs, 2012).
Reproductive Justice & Critical Adoption Studies Intersection Points
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RJ asks: what makes parenting possible? What happens when people lack food, housing, medical care, disability supports, or legal safety?
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RJ intersects with critiques of child welfare as punitive surveillance—especially for marginalized communities. Dorothy Roberts argues the U.S. child welfare system is better understood as a “family policing system” that disproportionately targets Black families (Roberts, 2022).
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Policing, prisons, and family separation can’t be cleanly separated from reproductive freedom when caregivers risk losing children due to criminalization or state scrutiny.
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RJ holds the long history of reproductive control (including coercion and institutional decision-making) and asks how disability oppression shapes who gets supported to parent.
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Legal vulnerability, detention, deportation, and cross-border policies affect whether families can remain intact—and how children are moved.
Common misconceptions about Reproductive Justice
“RJ is only about abortion.” RJ includes the right to parent safely and with support.
“RJ means adoption is always wrong.” The RJ and critical adoption studies frameworks help us move away from binary arguments about whether or not adoption is good or bad. These arguments generally leave people stuck. Instead, these frameworks ask us to think deeply and reflect on questions that lead us to examine power, coercion, and support systems.
“Talking about power structures minimizes adoptee relationships.” Naming structural pressures can coexist with adoptive family relationships.
References
Ahmed, O. & Gamble, C.M. (2017). Reproductive justice: What it means and why it matters (now more than ever). Public Health Post. Retrieved from https://www.publichealthpost.org/viewpoints/reproductive-justice/
Briggs, L. (2012). Somebody's children: The politics of transracial and transnational adoption. Duke University Press.
Ross, L.J. & Solinger, R. (2017). Reproductive justice: An introduction. University of California Press, Oakland, CA.