In a historic and unprecedented decision on July 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), thereby giving individual states the authority over the bodies and reproductive health of all pregnant people. Although the constitutional rights of Black, Indigenous and other people of color in the U.S. and its colonial territories have been repeatedly abrogated, this ruling is the first time in history that the court has taken away an individual liberty. The right to privacy and liberty to terminate a pregnancy, enshrined as fifty-year legal precedent, has been reversed. This decision vastly undermines all people’s ability to exercise reproductive choice and places the bodies of the majority under state control.
The Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington stands in solidarity with feminist activists locally and globally who have long struggled for and will continue to fight for reproductive justice. As our colleague Bettina Judd, with a perceptive eye toward both past and future, asserts, “folks on the ground have been activated and ready.”
We recognize that those who are most marginalized and denied safe and affordable health care will be most negatively impacted by this SCOTUS decision, and its ramifications extend beyond U.S. borders. We recognize that throughout U.S. history the state has exerted control over racialized women’s bodies—through enslavement, sterilization campaigns, and access to contraception and care. We recognize that the movement for reproductive justice is inextricably linked to structural struggles for social and economic justice at the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, immigration status, and ability. Reproductive justice is about the collective ability of and equitable resources for all people to parent, raise, and educate children in safe and sustainable communities.
During a time of personal and political turmoil, our departmental mission remains to educate members of our community and to provide resources to better understand and navigate violence and uncertainty, as we continue working together to critique and mobilize against entangled systematic injustices.
Local Resources
- GWSS Prof. Bettina Judd’s Q&A with UW News on Reproductive Justice
- UW Office of the President Statement (including UW resources)
- Northwest Abortion Access Fund
- Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho
- WA State Abortion Resources
National Resources
- National Women’s Studies Association Statement Concerning the Overturning of Roe v. Wade
- Digital Defense Fund on Abortion Security
- Health & Human Services Guidance to Protect Patient Privacy
- Keep Our Clinics
- Miscarriage + Abortion Hotline
- National Advocates for Pregnant Women
- National Mobilization for Reproductive Justice
- National Network of Abortion Funds
- Plan C
- SisterSong: Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective
- Vote Save America Resources for Access and Action
Resources for Studying Up
- Asian American Writers’ Workshop: A Black and Asian Feminist Reproductive Justice Syllabus
- Black Women Radicals: Reproductive Justice: A Reading List
- Duke University Press: Reproductive Rights Syllabus
- Radical History Review: U.S. Abortion Politics in Context
- We Organize to Change Everything: Fight for Abortion Access and Reproductive Justice
UW-licensed Resources from the UW Libraries Compiled by GWSS Librarian, Cass Hartnett
Streaming Films
- Ross, Loretta, Deja Foxx, and Fellicia Gustin. The Future of Reproductive Rights : an Intergenerational Conversation. Oakland, CA: The Institute for Democratic Education and Culture, 2021.
“Two women of different generations and personal histories talk about their views on reproductive rights. Zoom video, includes chat messages. Part of SpeakOut's 2021 virtual events schedule. - Porter, Dawn, Marilyn Ness, and Dawn (Dawn Michele) Porter. Trapped. Sausalito, CA: Ro*Co Films, 2016.
“As the battle heads to the U.S. Supreme Court [circa 2016], TRAPPED follows the struggles of the clinic workers and lawyers fighting to keep abortion safe and legal for millions of American women.” - Tajima-Pena, Renee, Virginia Espino, Claudio Rocha, Johanna Demetrakas, Bronwen Jones, Maria Hurtado, Consuelo Hermosillo, Antonia Hernández, and Bernard Rosenfeld. No Más Bebés = No More Babies. Los Angeles, California: Moon Canyon Films, 2015.
"The story of Mexican immigrant women who were pushed into sterilization while giving birth at L.A. County hospital during the 1970s. Alongside intrepid young Chicana/o lawyers and a whistle-blowing doctor, the mothers stood up to powerful institutions in the name of justice"--Container. - Tamarkin, Fisher, Luchina, Arnesen, Ingrid, Filmer, Steve, Johnson, Suzanne D., White, Brad, Futterman, Joel, Levin, Ike, Tamarkin Productions, production company, & Women Make Movies , publisher. (2017). Birthright : a war story. [Women Make Movies].
“In America today [circa 2017], a radical movement has tightened its grip on state power, seeking to control whether and how women bear children. In this crusade, pregnant women are subject to state control, surveillance, and punishment. Even women who don't want an abortion face shocking risks.” --Container
eBooks
- Foster, Diana Greene. The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having--Or Being Denied--an Abortion. New York: Scribner, 2020.
“What happens when a woman seeking an abortion is turned away? To answer this question, Diana Greene Foster assembled a team of scientists--psychologists, epidemiologists, demographers, nurses, physicians, economists, sociologists, and public health researchers--to conduct a ten-year study.” - Fox, Dov. Birth Rights and Wrongs: How Medicine and Technology Are Remaking Reproduction and the Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. doi:10.1093/oso/9780190675721.001.0001.
- Kaplan, Sara Clarke. The Black Reproductive : Unfree Labor and Insurgent Motherhood. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021. “How Black women's reproduction became integral to white supremacy, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy--and remains key to their dismantling"--Provided by publisher.
- Matthiesen, Sara. Reproduction Reconceived: Family Making and the Limits of Choice after Roe V. Wade. 1st ed. Vol. 5. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2021. doi:10.2307/j.ctv20dsb22.
“ …[Examines widening inequality, an ongoing trend that continues to make choice more myth than reality. In this new and timely history, Matthiesen shows how the effects of incarceration, for-profit healthcare, disease, and poverty have been worsened by state neglect, forcing most to work harder to maintain a family.” - Zavella, Patricia. The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color Through Social Activism. New York: New York University Press, 2020.
“[Zavella] draws on five years of ethnographic research to explore collaborations among women of color engaged in reproductive justice activism.” - UW Libraries guide on broader issues of Health Equity, anti-racism: https://guides.lib.uw.edu/hsl/arch
Journals
- https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/48253 or
https://offcampus.lib.washington.edu/login?url=https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/48253
Feminist Studies is pleased to make available for free access our most recent relevant publications on abortion from the last ten years. We have grouped them into three sections: Political Strategies, Artistic Engagement, and Perspectives beyond the U.S. This special digital issue will be accessible for free until the end of the 2022 year.