If you haven’t given up following the news, you’ll see a pro natalist agenda being pushed in Britain and the US – pro natalism is an ideology that promotes the reproduction of humans and alsowomen’s primary role as ‘giving birth to boost the population’. Because of its dual definition, it’s picked up by not just the conservative right but also by liberal centrists. This includes British legacy media, like The Guardian, discussing what is to be done about ‘declining birthrates’.

As well as talk of declining birthrates, you’ve got radicalized young men – incels and others – ranting about the male loneliness epidemic due to women’s reluctance to ‘do their duty’ and settle down. There’s been a worrying increase in investigations of women in Britain suspected of illegally administering abortion pills after having unexpected miscarriages.

Gender critical activists are being funded by groups like the Conservative Political Action Coalition to investigate ending Gillick’s Competence to “protect” children from the hateful trans agenda meanwhile slyly critiquing ‘dangerous contraceptives’ at the same time. Gillick’s competence is the legal concept for assessing whether minors are competent enough to receive medical care without their parents consent and is used mainly for underage, cis women to get contraceptives.

Nigel Farage spoke openly about the dangers of late abortion terms, Donald Trump’s administration belittles women without children, promising to afford more voting power to those with families and Elon Musk has said that the declining birthrate is a ‘bigger risk to civilisation than global warming’. All of these things are part of an attack on reproductive rights and women’s liberation. 

For the last few decades, the fight for reproductive rights has been one of pro choice and focused mainly on abortion; however, only defending the rights we have now does not allow us to demand for more. So, today I want to speak about the why just being pro choice does not go far enough and how, as feminists, we must move back to more radical demands for reproductive justice in light of these new pro natalist, conservative forces.  

REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE 

The three pillars of reproductive justice are: 

• the right to an abortion; 
• the right to carry children;
• and the right to raise children in a safe and healthy environment.

They were coined by a group of 12 black, women activists in the 1990s in the United States after the group experienced frustration at the lack of consideration for the experiences of racialised people around the topic of becoming a mother.

Reproductive justice differs from reproductive rights in that it is based on liberation through the abolition of structures that prevent the safe and healthy continuation of human reproduction rather than just the rights we have now under our capitalist system. The issue with only focusing on rights is that it assumes equality and equity has been achieved for all but as we’ll explore, this is far from the case.  Reproductive justice fights for abortion rights but it couples it with other radical liberation/abolitionist ideas as well as the basic pillars of socialism – the provisions of housing, healthcare, education for all, etc.

Reproductive justice asks us to consider the reproductive labour, and power structures behind having children. Without this, having children becomes an indulgence rather than something that is provided unpaid, at great cost by members of society (women) for the good of capitalism; when it is framed as only a choice, it seems reasonable that it is largely unpaid – for example, not providing mandatory maternity/paternity leave, free childcare, free healthcare, housing, etc.

HOW DID THIS START?

Abortion takes the centre stage in our current discussion of reproductive rights. It has always been linked to religion and morality so this is the lens in which the majority of us view it.  However, if you put that to one side, we can see that the religious angle is often used to hide a deeper agenda around the social division of labour and white supremacy

The religious debate has the inherent flaw that there is no explicit condemnation of abortion in the Bible, only a strong view on the sanctity of life. The pressure from religious leaders, from the Pope all the way down to local churches, is immense but when we strip away the moral, religious element of abortion, we can explore the idea that abortion restrictions serve the capitalist class by guaranteeing a new generation of workers to be exploited to serve their profit demands. 

The control of reproductive rights has become a key right wing organising tool and wedge issue used to split the working class down the lines of religion and also excite an evangelical base with large amounts of money and organising networks. Additionally, when we view the issue through the lens of white supremacy, reproductive control stands in for the previous iterations of segregation of people of colour.

White supremacy groups have always had ties to anti abortion sentiment. Dr David Gunn and Dr John Britton, two reproductive healthcare doctors in the US, were murdered by anti-abortion extremists with the express intention of stopping them from performing abortions. Gunn’s killer was allegedly being ‘brainwashed’ by John Burt, a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Today, large anti abortion groups like March for Life in the US – whose UK division marched on London 6th September – retain links to white supremacy groups like Patriot Front, who joined the US march in 2022.

REPRODUCTIVE LABOUR 

To examine further the declining birthrate narrative, we must look at reproductive labour. Reproductive Labour is the mainly unpaid labour needed to reproduce and maintain human life, and under capitalism this free labour is often extracted from women. This includes not only the process of gestation but also the household labour looking after the child and their spouse. With unpaid labour at home, the capitalist is free to pay its workers the minimum wage needed to cover the basic necessities, and demand long working hours, in turn keeping production costs low and maximising profit. 

Whilst the low birthrate narrative is framed as a right wing issue, neoliberal centrists also buy into it due to their investment in the capitalist system – profits rely on a new generation of workers to exploit, naturally invoking fear for the state of the economy if the birthrates drop. Due to this, they are unable to effectively critique and change the material conditions which make reproduction unappealing or impossible for many.

When these material conditions under which we are expected to raise children become unattainable, abortion bans become a necessary means of forcing reproduction. Therefore, it is imperative that the capitalist class be in control of the means of reproduction as well as the means of production. 

WHITE SUPREMACY

In England and the US, we see mass incarceration and immigration restrictions as well as a hateful uprising of street violence against people of colour.  This is motivated by “fears of being numerically and politically overwhelmed by people of color.” This is classic white supremacist thinking and is the same one behind the declining birthrate fears. Fighting systemic racism must be practiced and cannot be separated from reproductive justice. 

When we speak only of pro-choice and abortions, with regards to reproductive rights, we leave out the horrifying history of forced sterilisations and dangerous reproductive healthcare, for people of colour that has been used to restrict reproduction and ensure patriarchal, white dominance. 

In the UK, this thinking is ingrained in the history of reproductive healthcare with Marie Stopes, founder of the first UK family planning clinic, being a prominent eugenicist believed that mixing races led to “inferior stock”. She proposed that mixed race people be sterilized at birth during the 1920s. In the US in the 1970s, Puerto Ricon women were the most likely to be sterilized in the world; in the 1960s US groups like the Indian Health Service started providing family planning to Native American communities with the express intent of lowering the birth rate and over a third of the women sterilized in the US were misled to believe that the procedure was not permanent. 

CRIMINALISATION

The current discussions around reproductive rights also omit the suffering of women in the penal system subjected to large amounts of reproductive abuse at the hands of the justice system and male prison guards. Due to their status as prisoners, women in the US have experienced forced sterilisations as well as being coerced into being test subjects for dangerous contraceptives to avoid jail time. There have even been cases of women’s sentences being reduced if they agree to be sterilised. 

Today in Britain, Level Up, a gender justice campaign group, have been fighting for 5 years to stop pregnant women being imprisoned after two infant mortalities occurred in UK prisons. The group fights for the basic demand that prison is no place for a pregnant person due to the unsafe conditions. Additionally, if the child survives prison, it is taken from the mother after birth which is traumatic for both the mother and the child.  

When we relate these practices to the criminalisation of women via abortion laws, we can see how reproductive restrictions can be used to criminalize certain kinds of women and also how the penal system itself can contribute to the white supremacist project via the treatment of female ‘criminals’. 

Most crimes committed by women are below six months for things like shoplifting or theft. We’ve seen an increase in anti-theft devices put onto baby formula showing the desperate positions parents find themselves in today, yet when they are part of the penal system, they are dehumanised and their right to basic safety during and after pregnancy is denied. This is something we also see in the struggle for trans liberation regarding the safety of trans women in prisons.

EUGENICS

Reproductive justice must also be a pillar in disability justice. In our society disabled people are constantly made to feel like they are worthless with assisted suicide bills being passed at the same time as disabled people have their benefits cut. Sterilisations and abortions are still touted as better alternatives than raising a disabled child. Reproductive justice must be included in a wider question around bodily autonomy and we must fight for the abolition of these disgusting, eugenistist practices.

Under our capitalist system, if you are unable to work easily and without assistance in workplace, you are considered disabled and cruelly tossed aside. If you cannot work, you are expected to find your own way through the world but don’t expect the state to offer financial support. If you are no good to capitalism, you are no good for breeding. This is another reason why we must ensure we talk about justice outside of just abortion restrictions, for some, abortions are encouraged and at worse, forced. 

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, we must ensure that our fight for reproductive freedom is diverse and intersectional. Thinking about our actions through the framework of reproductive justice allows us to engage with this more than reproductive rights. Being pro choice has been coopted by liberal, white feminism meaning the oppression felt by women of colour is often overlooked. 

The fight for reproductive justice must be spoken about in a larger context of police and prison abolition. Criminalisation is a process of dehumanisation. Reproductive justice cannot be won without prison abolition which sees prisoners as a stain on society to be further exploited and prevented from reproducing. We must also find the courage to support those who break the law and stand up for what they believe is right. Previous fights for reproductive healthcare have been won on the basis that doctors practicing abortions didn’t stop when they were told to. 

When we argue for reproductive justice, we have to look beyond just provision and delve deeper into what it really means to have access to something – It’s not enough to just argue for contraceptives if they’re not safe. It’s not enough to argue for legal abortion if the clinics are hard to come by or not free.  It’s not enough to just rely on those who carry the baby, what are cis men doing for reproductive rights? Why is there still no male contraceptive pill available?

We must fight for the full decriminalisation of abortion in Britain but we also cannot neglect the importance of fighting for what we need to live comfortably, out on the streets and in our community, and building solidarity with other liberation movements for marginalised groups who have suffered behind the scenes and have been forgotten by the pro-choice movement.

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