Dobbs and the Politics of Reproduction

When I first heard the news that Roe v. Wade had been overturned by the Supreme Court in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, one week before this article was due, my heart sank. I knew it was coming, but that didn’t soften the blow. I scrapped an earlier draft of this piece and shifted my focus. So, what does this landmark decision mean for feminist political struggle? For the field of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies (WGSS)?

The overturning of Roe has implications for a whole host of issues regarding privacy, sexuality, and protection of individual rights, in addition to reproductive justice. Sexual autonomy and freedom, not only for cisgender women, are under threat, as Justice Clarence Thomas made clear in his concurring opinion that the court should also reconsider previous rulings regarding contraception and same-sex marriage. Dobbs paves the way to undo same-sex marriage, in vitro fertilization, interracial marriage, contraception, and transgender rights. At the same time, it is stunning that abortion has been declared illegal in many parts of the country at a moment when sexual assault is both widespread and very much in public discourse— when it is being paraded and defended by the likes of Brett Kavanaugh and Donald Trump. Especially because there is no exception for rape, the decision seems to disregard the pervasiveness of sexual assault and create a scenario where the victims must pay the price for the sins of the assailant.

As important as the legal right to abortion is, reproductive justice encompasses a much wider set of issues. As articulated by women of color scholars and activists, reproductive justice is a framework that incorporates the right to terminate a pregnancy, access to contraception, an end to coerced sterilizations, and social and economic support for mothers and children (Roberts 1997; Ross et al. 2017). Reproductive justice entails both bodily autonomy and guarantees that people have the freedom to decide if and when they want to have children.

Since the 1960s, feminists such as welfare rights activists fought for mothers to have the economic resources to ensure reproductive justice (Nadasen 2005). The welfare rights movement’s demands for both sexual autonomy and state financial assistance to raise their children illustrate how reproductive justice is inextricably bound up with mothering, care work, and financial stability. The right to an abortion is one building block in a larger structure that has served as a foundation to ensure women’s political and economic freedom.

Over time, these rights have slowly eroded. In 1977, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, which prohibited federal funding for abortion, making abortion less accessible to poor women. Despite measures put in place to protect women from coerced sterilizations, as recently as 2010 women in California prisons were sterilized, often under pressure, without state approval (Chappel 2013). In 1996 the transformation of welfare from a cash entitlement program to block grants to states led to a precipitous decline in the number of single parents on public assistance. And because of pervasive and systemic racism and discrimination, Black women have much worse maternal health outcomes (Davis 2019). No federal policies in the U.S. provide the kind of comprehensive support that families require to raise and care for children. According to the Department of Labor, only 56 percent of American workers qualify for the Family Medical Leave Act, and many of those don’t get paid leave (Brown, Herr, Roy, and Klerman 2020). Dobbs is just one in a long line of assaults on reproductive justice.

It is ironic that the Mississippi-based Jackson Women’s Health Organization is at the center of the Dobbs decision. It is a clinic I am familiar with because of my visits to the state where I have worked with the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative (MLICCI), an advocacy organization for poor mothers and struggling childcare providers. MLICCI has spent the past twenty years lobbying the state of Mississippi to release (not allocate) money designated for childcare for low-income mothers—which the state has not done. Mississippi is one of the stingiest states when it comes...