Beyond Pro-Choice Versus Pro-Life: Women of Color and Reproductive Justice

This paper argues that the pro-life versus pro-choice paradigm for understanding reproductive rights is a model that marginalizes women of color, poor women, women with disabilities, and women from other marginalized communities. The pro-life versus pro-choice paradigm serves to both reify and mask the structures of white supremacy and capitalism that undergird the reproductive choices that women make. While both camps of the pro-choice and pro-life debate give lip service to addressing the concerns of women of color, in the end the manner in which both articulate the issues at stake contributes to their support of political positions that are racist and sexist and which do nothing to support either life or real choice for women of color. Instead, women of color activists should develop alternative paradigms for articulating reproductive justice that make critiques of capitalism and criminalization central to the analysis rather than simply expand either pro-choice or pro-life frameworks.