Reproductive Justice After the Pandemic: How 'Personal Responsibility' Entrenches Disparities and Limits Autonomy
I. Glenn Cohen, Abbe R. Gluck, Katherine L. Kraschel, Carmel Shachar (eds.), COVID-19 and the Law: Disruption, Impact, and Legacy, Cambridge University Press (Forthcoming 2023).
11 Pages Posted: 20 Dec 2022
Date Written: June 1, 2022
Abstract
COVID-19 laid bare the responsibility American laws, policies, and society have long placed on individuals to ensure their own health and well-being. Policies guided by an ethic of “personal responsibility” particularly restrict reproductive justice (RJ), a framework and set of objectives first defined by Black women as human rights to have children, not have children, and parent children in safe, healthy, and sustainable communities. RJ goes beyond an articulation of reproductive rights; it is an analytic and movement-building tool that describes how people are inseparable from the systems that they are in, and how those systems make their choices possible (or not). As we will make clear, the RJ framework is relevant not only to issues of reproduction and family, but also to understanding the social conditions in which individuals create families with children.
Keywords: Reproductive Justice, Racial Justice, Personal Responsibility, Telemedicine Abortion, Paid Family and Medical Leave, Judicial Bypass
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation