This commentary is the first in the series Connecting Disability Justice and Reproductive Justice, an ongoing collaboration between The Century Foundation’s Disability Economic Justice team and Maternal and Reproductive Health team. The series explores how the reproductive justice and disability justice movements came to be, the challenges they share, and the benefits of addressing potential solutions to those challenges through an intersectional lens. For potential topics of future exploration in the series, jump to the “Core Policy Issues of the Series” section.
Reproductive rights and freedoms—such as the right to abortion, birth control, and fertility treatments—are under attack nationwide. These attacks are an attempt to control the lives and bodies of women and birthing people, but the effects are not felt equally. Women and birthing people of color and disabled women and birthing people are disproportionately harmed by legal and policy decisions that curtail rights and restrict access to reproductive health care.
Ensuring that everyone, regardless of race, gender, or disability, has control over their reproductive destiny will require harnessing the power of the disability justice and reproductive justice movements.
Ensuring that everyone, regardless of race, gender, or disability, has control over their reproductive destiny will require harnessing the power of the disability justice and reproductive justice movements.
This commentary will explore, in brief, the origins of these two movements as well as the history of multiple oppressions at their intersection. Understanding how these movements came to be allows advocates and policymakers to better identify the societal and governmental gaps in disabled people’s reproductive rights. Additionally, looking at challenges through an intersectional lens will lead to better policy solutions for everyone.
What Are Intersectionality, Reproductive Justice, and Disability Justice?
When we consider health equity and social justice, two frameworks whose intersectionality is not widely recognized are disability justice and reproductive justice.
Coined in 1989 by leading scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, “intersectionality” is a term used to describe how systems of oppression can overlap, creating distinct experiences of privilege and safety or of disadvantage and inequity for people with multiple marginalized identity categories. Crenshaw’s research on intersectional feminism specifically highlights “white feminism” as a term used to capture a type of feminism that excludes and overshadows unique struggles faced by women of color.
The reproductive justice framework was first officially named in 1994 by a group of Black women who were dissatisfied with the “pro-choice” versus “pro-life” binary of the existing (and predominantly white-led) reproductive rights movement. They did not feel that the reproductive rights movement was adequately addressing all of the issues related to sexual and reproductive health, birth, and parenting that disproportionately impact communities of color.
The disability justice framework was created in 2005 by Sins Invalid, a collective of disabled queer women of color, to build upon the disability rights movement. While the disability rights movement played a major role in establishing civil rights for people with disabilities and led to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) being passed in 1990, it often fell short of examining how the intersections of race, gender, class, and sexuality play a role in the oppression of people with disabilities.
Many in our society have ingrained social biases when it comes to the intersection of reproductive justice and disability justice. Both fundamental frameworks were formed in response to racism, sexism, and ableism. Through these forms of discrimination, paternalism (condescension and control framed as fatherly affection and concern) has prospered. Those being discriminated against (especially disabled women of color) are far too often not believed to possess the ability—and therefore denied the human right—to determine their reproductive lives on their own terms. These ideologies have taken center stage in this election year’s debates about issues like immigration and reproductive health care access, and have deep historical ties to the pseudoscience of eugenics.
Terms to Know:
Racism: The systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another.
Sexism: Prejudice or discrimination based on sex, stemming from an ideology that one sex is superior to the other.
Ableism: Prejudice or discrimination against people with disabilities in favor of able-bodied people.
Intersectionality: A term used to describe how systems of oppression can overlap, creating distinct experiences of disadvantage and inequity for people with multiple marginalized identity categories.
Reproductive justice: The human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.
Disability justice: The cross-disability framework that values access, self-determination, and an expectation of difference. An expectation of difference means that we expect difference in disability, identity, and culture.
The Shadow of Eugenics
Modern-day society is still grappling with the notions, either consciously or subconsciously, that some people, and some genetic traits, are better than others. Some people believe that genes and health are controllable, intentionally mutateable, and can be filtered for quality, thus creating a more perfect world. Coined by Francis Galton in 1883, eugenics is the theory that the human race could be improved through methods such as selective breeding. The broader implications of eugenics will be explored in a future commentary in this series.
The pseudoscience of eugenics continues to influence scientific and medical practice in the United States today. While the term “eugenics” has fallen out of favor, become socially taboo, and is no longer formally sanctioned by the medical and scientific communities, there are still many instances of eugenic philosophies and practices present today. For example, policies that allow for the forced sterilization (a permanent method of contraception) of people with disabilities are still on the books in thirty-one states and in the District of Columbia. As recently as 2022, an investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations into a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Georgia found that doctors were sterilizing their female detainees without their knowledge or consent. A class action lawsuit for forty-one of the victims is still being litigated. Unfortunately, this is not the only case of modern eugenics.
While the term “eugenics” has fallen out of favor, become socially taboo, and is no longer formally sanctioned by the medical and scientific communities, there are still many instances of eugenic philosophies and practices present today.
Forced and coerced sterilization is a form of reproductive violence inflicted upon many people with disabilities, as well as on other marginalized communities. Black, migrant, and Indigenous women and queer and trans people—populations who some want to see “cleansed” from the nation’s gene pool—are especially targeted. Those who identify with more than one of these populations also lie squarely in the crosshairs of problematic ideologies that support measures like forced and coerced sterilization.
Reproductive Justice for People with Disabilities
The intersections of disability and reproduction are complex, requiring continual discussion and reevaluation, as well as a compassionate and holistic approach. This is where the disability justice and reproductive justice frameworks come into play. Both frameworks were born out of the necessity to center those relegated to the margins of the disability rights and reproductive rights movements, and they offer a more comprehensive, intersectional, and human rights-based approach to addressing issues that impact those within our communities who are furthest from access to power and resources.
The intersections of disability and reproduction are complex, requiring continual discussion and reevaluation, as well as a compassionate and holistic approach. This is where the disability justice and reproductive justice frameworks come into play.
A core concern at this intersection has been the absence of consent for people with disabilities when managing contraception. The lenses of reproductive justice and disability justice dictate that consent must be the rule, not an accident. Disabled women and birthing people are disproportionately impacted by biased providers “pushing” specific methods of birth control, typically long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs), on them, a practice known as contraceptive coercion. Contraceptive coercion also manifests beyond individual provider bias and can be seen in public policy as well. For example, tying public benefits like the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program to “family caps” (a law that denies more cash assistance to families that have another child while enrolled in its program), or certain methods of birth control being covered by health insurance while others aren’t.
When it comes to abortion care, access for people with disabilities is regularly overlooked; the topic of disability-selective abortions is more commonly discussed. The reproductive rights movement’s focus on the right to abortion has often been clouded by stigma and ableist notions when it comes to disability-selective abortions, such as assumptions about disability and lifespan, quality of life, and “desirability” of raising a disabled child. In the cases of prenatal diagnosis of disability, we can see eugenics once again rear its ugly head.
Many conservative groups that describe themselves as “pro-life” have chosen to co-opt disability rights language when they advocate against abortion rights. However, many of the states that these groups champion for their anti-abortion policies are the same states that also do not prioritize allocating tax dollars towards essential social services that many disabled children may need to accommodate their lives, especially those living in low-income households. These programs include the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, or Social Security for children with disabilities.
It is important to acknowledge that pregnancy itself can be a disabling event for the birthing parent, and pregnancy-related complications that threaten the health of the birthing parent can also cause death and disability for newborns. Yet anti-abortion groups seem to uphold a double standard of “pro-life” when it comes to the health and well-being of the mother, especially if that mother is queer, disabled, or a person of color. Conservative politicians have been unwilling to pass legislation, like the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act, that would help to improve maternal health outcomes for all.
Access to high-quality, affordable, and respectful maternal health care is another element of reproductive justice that is often not realized for those with disabilities who want to have children or build a family. This is largely due to eugenics and efforts such as forced and coerced sterilization to prevent people with disabilities from having children.
Even today, many people do not view disabled people as being “fit” for or capable of parenting, and may not view them as able or suitable for carrying a fetus to term, let alone being a parent, or even having sex. Along with the stigma that disabled people cannot and should not reproduce comes a medically enforced bias. It starts young: sex education is frequently not taught to students or young people with disabilities. Disabled birthing people face challenges accessing maternal health care, like ultrasounds, while pregnant. For disabled parents, the community has fewer resources, and everything from parenting classes to parent–teacher conferences are not always held in accessible places. Parents with disabilities face barriers including accessing and affording needed equipment and technology, such as accessible strollers and carriers; encountering inaccessible changing tables in public places; and difficulty affording daycare, as well as personal care assistance.
Core Policy Issues of the Series
Working at the intersection of disability justice and reproductive justice allows advocates and policymakers to be inclusive and comprehensive when working to ensure that people with disabilities are able to access the full spectrum of reproductive health care services. Everyone, regardless of their intersecting identities, must be able to make their own decisions for their reproductive lives, free from the binds of paternalism expressed through racism, sexism, and ableism.
This commentary marks the first in a series that aims to tackle a number of specific policy issue areas that directly impact the reproductive freedom of those living at the intersections of race, gender, and disability. Future commentaries may engage with the following topics:
- Medicare and contraception
- Sex education and wellness for young people with disabilities
- Abortion access for people with disabilities
- Maternal health access for people with disabilities
- Parental representation and resources for people with disabilities
Tags: reproductive justice, disability justice
Why Connecting Disability Justice and Reproductive Justice Matters
This commentary is the first in the series Connecting Disability Justice and Reproductive Justice, an ongoing collaboration between The Century Foundation’s Disability Economic Justice team and Maternal and Reproductive Health team. The series explores how the reproductive justice and disability justice movements came to be, the challenges they share, and the benefits of addressing potential solutions to those challenges through an intersectional lens. For potential topics of future exploration in the series, jump to the “Core Policy Issues of the Series” section.
Reproductive rights and freedoms—such as the right to abortion, birth control, and fertility treatments—are under attack nationwide. These attacks are an attempt to control the lives and bodies of women and birthing people, but the effects are not felt equally. Women and birthing people of color and disabled women and birthing people are disproportionately harmed by legal and policy decisions that curtail rights and restrict access to reproductive health care.
Ensuring that everyone, regardless of race, gender, or disability, has control over their reproductive destiny will require harnessing the power of the disability justice and reproductive justice movements.
This commentary will explore, in brief, the origins of these two movements as well as the history of multiple oppressions at their intersection. Understanding how these movements came to be allows advocates and policymakers to better identify the societal and governmental gaps in disabled people’s reproductive rights. Additionally, looking at challenges through an intersectional lens will lead to better policy solutions for everyone.
What Are Intersectionality, Reproductive Justice, and Disability Justice?
When we consider health equity and social justice, two frameworks whose intersectionality is not widely recognized are disability justice and reproductive justice.
Coined in 1989 by leading scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, “intersectionality” is a term used to describe how systems of oppression can overlap, creating distinct experiences of privilege and safety or of disadvantage and inequity for people with multiple marginalized identity categories. Crenshaw’s research on intersectional feminism specifically highlights “white feminism” as a term used to capture a type of feminism that excludes and overshadows unique struggles faced by women of color.
The reproductive justice framework was first officially named in 1994 by a group of Black women who were dissatisfied with the “pro-choice” versus “pro-life” binary of the existing (and predominantly white-led) reproductive rights movement. They did not feel that the reproductive rights movement was adequately addressing all of the issues related to sexual and reproductive health, birth, and parenting that disproportionately impact communities of color.
The disability justice framework was created in 2005 by Sins Invalid, a collective of disabled queer women of color, to build upon the disability rights movement. While the disability rights movement played a major role in establishing civil rights for people with disabilities and led to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) being passed in 1990, it often fell short of examining how the intersections of race, gender, class, and sexuality play a role in the oppression of people with disabilities.
Many in our society have ingrained social biases when it comes to the intersection of reproductive justice and disability justice. Both fundamental frameworks were formed in response to racism, sexism, and ableism. Through these forms of discrimination, paternalism (condescension and control framed as fatherly affection and concern) has prospered. Those being discriminated against (especially disabled women of color) are far too often not believed to possess the ability—and therefore denied the human right—to determine their reproductive lives on their own terms. These ideologies have taken center stage in this election year’s debates about issues like immigration and reproductive health care access, and have deep historical ties to the pseudoscience of eugenics.
Terms to Know:
Racism: The systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another.
Sexism: Prejudice or discrimination based on sex, stemming from an ideology that one sex is superior to the other.
Ableism: Prejudice or discrimination against people with disabilities in favor of able-bodied people.
Intersectionality: A term used to describe how systems of oppression can overlap, creating distinct experiences of disadvantage and inequity for people with multiple marginalized identity categories.
Reproductive justice: The human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.
Disability justice: The cross-disability framework that values access, self-determination, and an expectation of difference. An expectation of difference means that we expect difference in disability, identity, and culture.
The Shadow of Eugenics
Modern-day society is still grappling with the notions, either consciously or subconsciously, that some people, and some genetic traits, are better than others. Some people believe that genes and health are controllable, intentionally mutateable, and can be filtered for quality, thus creating a more perfect world. Coined by Francis Galton in 1883, eugenics is the theory that the human race could be improved through methods such as selective breeding. The broader implications of eugenics will be explored in a future commentary in this series.
The pseudoscience of eugenics continues to influence scientific and medical practice in the United States today. While the term “eugenics” has fallen out of favor, become socially taboo, and is no longer formally sanctioned by the medical and scientific communities, there are still many instances of eugenic philosophies and practices present today. For example, policies that allow for the forced sterilization (a permanent method of contraception) of people with disabilities are still on the books in thirty-one states and in the District of Columbia. As recently as 2022, an investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations into a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Georgia found that doctors were sterilizing their female detainees without their knowledge or consent. A class action lawsuit for forty-one of the victims is still being litigated. Unfortunately, this is not the only case of modern eugenics.
Forced and coerced sterilization is a form of reproductive violence inflicted upon many people with disabilities, as well as on other marginalized communities. Black, migrant, and Indigenous women and queer and trans people—populations who some want to see “cleansed” from the nation’s gene pool—are especially targeted. Those who identify with more than one of these populations also lie squarely in the crosshairs of problematic ideologies that support measures like forced and coerced sterilization.
Reproductive Justice for People with Disabilities
The intersections of disability and reproduction are complex, requiring continual discussion and reevaluation, as well as a compassionate and holistic approach. This is where the disability justice and reproductive justice frameworks come into play. Both frameworks were born out of the necessity to center those relegated to the margins of the disability rights and reproductive rights movements, and they offer a more comprehensive, intersectional, and human rights-based approach to addressing issues that impact those within our communities who are furthest from access to power and resources.
A core concern at this intersection has been the absence of consent for people with disabilities when managing contraception. The lenses of reproductive justice and disability justice dictate that consent must be the rule, not an accident. Disabled women and birthing people are disproportionately impacted by biased providers “pushing” specific methods of birth control, typically long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs), on them, a practice known as contraceptive coercion. Contraceptive coercion also manifests beyond individual provider bias and can be seen in public policy as well. For example, tying public benefits like the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program to “family caps” (a law that denies more cash assistance to families that have another child while enrolled in its program), or certain methods of birth control being covered by health insurance while others aren’t.
When it comes to abortion care, access for people with disabilities is regularly overlooked; the topic of disability-selective abortions is more commonly discussed. The reproductive rights movement’s focus on the right to abortion has often been clouded by stigma and ableist notions when it comes to disability-selective abortions, such as assumptions about disability and lifespan, quality of life, and “desirability” of raising a disabled child. In the cases of prenatal diagnosis of disability, we can see eugenics once again rear its ugly head.
Many conservative groups that describe themselves as “pro-life” have chosen to co-opt disability rights language when they advocate against abortion rights. However, many of the states that these groups champion for their anti-abortion policies are the same states that also do not prioritize allocating tax dollars towards essential social services that many disabled children may need to accommodate their lives, especially those living in low-income households. These programs include the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, or Social Security for children with disabilities.
It is important to acknowledge that pregnancy itself can be a disabling event for the birthing parent, and pregnancy-related complications that threaten the health of the birthing parent can also cause death and disability for newborns. Yet anti-abortion groups seem to uphold a double standard of “pro-life” when it comes to the health and well-being of the mother, especially if that mother is queer, disabled, or a person of color. Conservative politicians have been unwilling to pass legislation, like the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act, that would help to improve maternal health outcomes for all.
Access to high-quality, affordable, and respectful maternal health care is another element of reproductive justice that is often not realized for those with disabilities who want to have children or build a family. This is largely due to eugenics and efforts such as forced and coerced sterilization to prevent people with disabilities from having children.
Even today, many people do not view disabled people as being “fit” for or capable of parenting, and may not view them as able or suitable for carrying a fetus to term, let alone being a parent, or even having sex. Along with the stigma that disabled people cannot and should not reproduce comes a medically enforced bias. It starts young: sex education is frequently not taught to students or young people with disabilities. Disabled birthing people face challenges accessing maternal health care, like ultrasounds, while pregnant. For disabled parents, the community has fewer resources, and everything from parenting classes to parent–teacher conferences are not always held in accessible places. Parents with disabilities face barriers including accessing and affording needed equipment and technology, such as accessible strollers and carriers; encountering inaccessible changing tables in public places; and difficulty affording daycare, as well as personal care assistance.
Core Policy Issues of the Series
Working at the intersection of disability justice and reproductive justice allows advocates and policymakers to be inclusive and comprehensive when working to ensure that people with disabilities are able to access the full spectrum of reproductive health care services. Everyone, regardless of their intersecting identities, must be able to make their own decisions for their reproductive lives, free from the binds of paternalism expressed through racism, sexism, and ableism.
This commentary marks the first in a series that aims to tackle a number of specific policy issue areas that directly impact the reproductive freedom of those living at the intersections of race, gender, and disability. Future commentaries may engage with the following topics:
Tags: reproductive justice, disability justice