Reproductive Justice, Power, and Expectations
Reproductive rights are not just an issue for those capable of pregnancy, but a universal fight for bodily freedom
The fight for reproductive justice extends far beyond access to healthcare or abortion rights. It represents a broader struggle for bodily autonomy and the dismantling of entrenched power structures—patriarchy, capitalism, conservative politics, and religious institutions—that manipulate reproductive control to maintain social and economic hierarchies. These structures enforce rigid gendered expectations around roles, caregiving, and family structures, all of which limit individual autonomy and perpetuate systemic inequalities.
True reproductive justice demands challenging these systems and acknowledging that reproductive rights are not just an issue for those capable of pregnancy but a universal fight for bodily freedom.
I. Power’s Role in Reproductive Control: Fear and Division
Power exerts control over reproductive bodies as a means of maintaining social and economic hierarchies. Through legal, social, and cultural mechanisms, power reveals its deep insecurities—the fear that without rigid control, the existing systems that benefit from reproductive exploitation would collapse. By dictating reproductive choices, power protects patriarchal, capitalist, and conservative family structures that rely on unpaid labor and entrenched gender roles.
Patriarchal Control: Enforcing Traditional Roles
Patriarchy enforces traditional caregiving roles, assigning women the primary responsibility for childbearing and caregiving. By restricting reproductive choices, power subordinates women within the family, limiting their participation in public life, reducing their economic independence, and maintaining male dominance in societal hierarchies. This division of roles keeps women tethered to caregiving and reinforces patriarchal dominance.
The fight for reproductive justice is a fight for freedom, dignity, and justice for all.
By dismantling the expectations-based culture and rejecting the systems that control reproductive bodies, we build a society where autonomy is a universal right, and reproductive justice is accessible to everyone.
Capitalist Exploitation: Ensuring Unpaid Labor
Capitalism benefits from the unpaid and underpaid labor of caregivers, particularly women. By controlling reproductive decisions, power ensures that women remain trapped in caregiving roles, providing the essential but invisible labor that sustains households and communities without compensation. The unpaid labor of mothers and caregivers supports the workforce and the capitalist economy while keeping women economically disadvantaged.
Conservative Politics and Religious Institutions: Gaining Moral and Political Power
Conservative politics and religious institutions capitalize on controlling reproductive rights to gain moral and political authority. By portraying family and motherhood as moral duties, they exert control over personal decisions, using religious doctrines and political rhetoric to shape public policy. This allows them to reinforce social conservatism and maintain their influence over reproductive bodies.
Division as a Tactic
Power maintains control over reproductive bodies by fostering division. By framing reproductive justice as a "women’s issue," power alienates groups like transgender men, non-binary individuals, and others who are directly affected. This division weakens solidarity and prevents a unified movement that could challenge power’s dominance over bodily autonomy.
Weaponizing gender norms: By framing reproductive rights in a binary, cisgender-focused narrative, power isolates individuals who do not conform to traditional gender roles. This alienation undermines solidarity and ensures that marginalized groups struggle separately, preventing them from joining forces to challenge the systems of control.
Moral policing: Power employs moral narratives through religious and political institutions to stigmatize those who assert reproductive autonomy. By promoting a rigid moral framework, power divides those who adhere to family-centered values from those seeking reproductive freedom, limiting collective resistance.
Power’s reliance on division, shame, and moral policing ensures that reproductive control remains firmly in its grasp, making it harder for marginalized groups to form a cohesive, unified front to challenge the oppressive structures of control.
II. Inclusive Language and the Universal Scope of Reproductive Justice
Language plays a pivotal role in shaping the discourse around reproductive justice. Historically, the issue has been framed as a "women’s issue," which excludes transgender men, non-binary individuals, and others affected by reproductive policies. By adopting inclusive language such as “people capable of pregnancy,” the reproductive justice movement broadens its scope, ensuring that all voices are represented and recognized in the struggle for bodily autonomy.
Broadening the Conversation
Inclusive language reframes reproductive justice as a universal struggle for bodily autonomy, challenging the gendered narrative that power uses to maintain its control. It ensures that the conversation around reproductive rights is not confined to women alone but extends to everyone affected by reproductive policies, regardless of gender identity.
Recognizing all affected individuals builds solidarity across gender and identity lines. It strengthens the movement by ensuring that all voices—cisgender women, transgender men, non-binary individuals, and others—are included in the fight for bodily autonomy.
Rejecting gender essentialism: Inclusive language pushes the movement beyond a women-only framework and challenges the rigid gender binaries that power relies on to exert control. By recognizing that reproductive justice is about the right to control one’s body, rather than reproductive capacity alone, the movement empowers all individuals to demand bodily autonomy.
III. The Harm of an Expectations-Based Culture
Power exerts control through expectations-based culture, reinforcing traditional gender roles, caregiving responsibilities, and rigid family structures. These rigid norms trap individuals—particularly women and those capable of pregnancy—into predefined roles, stripping them of their autonomy and limiting their choices.
Stigmatization and Shame
Stigmatization of abortion: Power exploits societal expectations that frame motherhood as a natural duty, creating stigma around abortion. By portraying abortion as a rejection of one’s moral duty to motherhood, power induces guilt and shame in those who seek abortions, reinforcing compliance with traditional gender roles. This stigmatization ensures that individuals feel isolated in their choice to assert autonomy.
Emotional and psychological harm: The internalization of societal expectations can lead to significant mental health struggles. Individuals feel pressured to conform to narrow definitions of caregiving and family, and the lack of autonomy leads to increased anxiety, depression, and isolation. When people are forced into roles they do not want or cannot fulfill, the result is deep psychological harm.
Divisions in Solidarity
Power uses societal expectations to divide individuals, separating those who conform to traditional caregiving roles from those who resist them. By positioning motherhood and caregiving as moral obligations, power isolates those who assert their autonomy and limits collective action.
Moral superiority: Those who conform to traditional roles may be elevated to positions of moral superiority in society, distancing themselves from those seeking reproductive autonomy. This reinforces division between groups and ensures that collective resistance to power’s control is weakened.
Alienation: Those who reject traditional motherhood or caregiving roles often experience alienation from societal support. This alienation, compounded by stigmatization, makes alternative choices more difficult, further entrenching power’s control over reproductive bodies.
By fostering divisions based on societal expectations, power ensures that solidarity is broken, preventing the formation of a collective movement that could challenge its authority over reproductive rights.
IV. Reproductive Justice as a Universal Struggle
Reproductive justice is about more than pregnancy or abortion—it is about the universal right to bodily autonomy and intersects with broader struggles for economic, social, and political equality. By recognizing the universal scope of reproductive justice, we can address the systemic inequalities that affect all individuals, regardless of gender identity or reproductive capacity.
Shared Caregiving Responsibilities
Challenging gendered caregiving: Reproductive justice challenges the expectation that caregiving is solely a woman’s responsibility. By promoting the redistribution of caregiving responsibilities across all genders, reproductive justice weakens patriarchal power structures and ensures that caregiving is seen as a shared societal responsibility.
Political and Social Equality
Resisting government overreach: Reproductive justice promotes the idea that personal decisions should not be dictated by the state. By resisting government interference in private choices, the movement strengthens democratic principles and protects the right to bodily autonomy. Ensuring that individuals retain control over their own bodies promotes broader freedom and social justice.
Economic Equity
Addressing poverty and inequality: Restrictive reproductive policies disproportionately harm marginalized communities, exacerbating cycles of poverty and inequality. Empowering individuals to make their own reproductive choices challenges capitalist structures that exploit unpaid caregiving labor and deepens poverty among vulnerable populations. By ensuring reproductive autonomy, reproductive justice promotes economic mobility and challenges the structural inequalities that sustain economic exploitation.
Reproductive justice is not just a personal issue—it is a collective responsibility that encompasses the broader fight for bodily autonomy, social equality, and economic justice. Ensuring that everyone has access to reproductive rights contributes to a more just and equitable society.
V. Breaking Free from Power and Expectations
Achieving reproductive justice requires breaking free from the expectations-based culture that limits autonomy and reinforces inequality. This involves challenging rigid gender roles, embracing diverse family structures, and fostering solidarity across all gender and identity lines.
Inclusive Language as a Central Tenet
Representation for all: The movement must use inclusive language to ensure that everyone affected by reproductive policies is represented and empowered to fight for bodily autonomy. Ensuring that all voices are heard strengthens solidarity and builds a more inclusive and effective movement.
Challenging Traditional Gender Roles
Redistributing caregiving: Moving away from the expectation that caregiving is a woman’s responsibility challenges the patriarchal structures that sustain inequality. By promoting the idea that caregiving is a shared societal role, reproductive justice dismantles the gendered expectations that power uses to exert control.
Rejecting Divisive Narratives
Building solidarity: Power thrives on division, but by framing reproductive justice as a universal struggle, we can unite diverse groups in the fight for bodily autonomy. By rejecting the divisive narratives that power promotes, we can build solidarity across gender, identity, and community lines, creating a powerful, unified movement that challenges the systems of control over reproductive rights. Solidarity is key to breaking down the barriers that power erects to prevent cohesive resistance. By framing reproductive justice as an issue of bodily autonomy that affects everyone, we dismantle the artificial divisions that power uses to weaken collective action.
VI. Exposing Power’s Insecurities Through Reproductive Control
The exertion of control over reproductive rights and bodily autonomy is a direct reflection of power’s insecurities. The lengths to which power goes to maintain control reveal its underlying fragility. If power were confident in the natural dominance of its systems—patriarchy, capitalism, religious authority—it would not need to exert such restrictive control over reproductive bodies. The overreach into personal decisions is a testament to power’s fear of what happens when individuals are free to make autonomous choices about their bodies.
Fear of Losing Control Over Social Order
Power’s control over reproduction stems from a fear of losing control over traditional social structures. Patriarchy and capitalism rely on the unpaid reproductive labor of women to sustain the family unit and broader economic systems. The subjugation of those capable of pregnancy ensures that these systems continue to operate without disruption.
The threat of autonomy: When individuals are empowered to make decisions about their reproductive health, the traditional power dynamics that rely on gendered labor and caregiving begin to unravel. Power fears that granting full bodily autonomy will erode the social hierarchies that have historically kept women and marginalized individuals subordinated within the family and workforce.
The collapse of patriarchal norms: Power understands that if reproductive justice is achieved, the patriarchal norms that frame women as primary caregivers and moral gatekeepers will begin to disintegrate. The fear of losing control over gender roles is central to the enforcement of reproductive restrictions.
Economic Insecurity: The Dependency on Unpaid Labor
Capitalism depends on the unpaid labor of caregivers, particularly women, to maintain the economic system. Restricting reproductive rights ensures a steady supply of labor for caregiving and child-rearing, keeping women economically dependent and limiting their participation in the paid workforce.
Exposing capitalist exploitation: Power’s control over reproductive choices reveals the economic insecurities embedded in capitalist systems. If individuals are free to control their reproductive decisions, the invisible labor that capitalism relies on would need to be compensated or redistributed, fundamentally threatening the economic system’s reliance on free labor.
The fear of redistribution: Power fears that achieving reproductive justice will lead to a redistribution of labor, where caregiving is recognized as a shared societal responsibility. This redistribution threatens the capitalist model that benefits from gendered labor divisions and the exploitation of marginalized communities.
Religious and Cultural Fragility: The Moral Justification for Control
Religious and cultural institutions gain power by framing reproductive rights as a moral issue, using moral authority to justify control over bodies. However, the reliance on moral arguments to enforce reproductive restrictions reveals the fragility of these institutions in a changing world.
Losing moral authority: As society becomes more secular and individuals assert their bodily autonomy, religious and cultural institutions face the erosion of their moral authority. By controlling reproductive decisions, they attempt to maintain relevance and influence, but their need to impose control betrays their insecurity about losing their grip on societal values.
The diminishing power of tradition: Cultural traditions that reinforce gender roles and family structures are threatened by the rise of reproductive justice. Power understands that if individuals reject these traditions in favor of autonomy, the cultural foundations that support patriarchal and religious dominance will begin to crumble.
VII. Building a Future of Bodily Autonomy: Dismantling Power’s Hold
Achieving true reproductive justice requires not only challenging power’s hold over reproductive rights but also dismantling the broader systems that maintain control over bodies. This involves a comprehensive effort to redistribute caregiving roles, challenge economic exploitation, and reject the moral and cultural justifications for limiting autonomy.
Redistributing Caregiving Responsibilities
Challenging the gendered division of labor: One of the most significant steps toward reproductive justice is the redistribution of caregiving responsibilities across all genders. By rejecting the idea that caregiving is a woman’s responsibility, we challenge the patriarchal structures that rely on gendered labor and begin to dismantle the unpaid labor systems that exploit caregivers.
Building shared societal responsibility: Caregiving must be recognized as a shared societal role, with men, non-binary individuals, and broader social institutions playing an equal part. This shift undermines power’s reliance on the unpaid labor of women and marginalized groups and creates a more equitable system of caregiving.
Economic Justice: Compensating Reproductive Labor
Recognizing caregiving as labor: For true reproductive justice to be achieved, caregiving labor must be recognized, valued, and compensated. This means challenging the capitalist structures that exploit unpaid labor and pushing for policies that provide financial support to caregivers, such as paid family leave, childcare subsidies, and healthcare access.
Breaking the cycle of economic dependency: By empowering individuals to make autonomous reproductive decisions and providing economic support for caregiving, we can break the cycle of economic dependency that keeps women and marginalized individuals tied to the unpaid labor of caregiving. This shift challenges the capitalist system’s reliance on free labor and creates greater economic equity for all.
Challenging Moral and Cultural Narratives
Rejecting the moral policing of reproductive decisions: Religious and cultural institutions must be challenged on their moral justifications for controlling reproductive rights. By rejecting the narrative that motherhood and caregiving are moral obligations, we dismantle the cultural foundations that reinforce patriarchy and limit bodily autonomy.
Embracing diverse family structures: Reproductive justice also requires recognizing and embracing diverse family structures that do not conform to traditional models. By celebrating a plurality of family forms—single-parent families, same-sex couples, chosen families, and non-traditional caregiving arrangements—we challenge the cultural norms that power uses to maintain control.
Strengthening Solidarity Across Movements
Building cross-movement solidarity: Reproductive justice is not an isolated issue; it intersects with other struggles for bodily autonomy, including the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, racial justice, and disability rights. By building solidarity across these movements, we can strengthen the collective effort to challenge power’s control over bodies and demand comprehensive bodily autonomy for all.
Unifying through shared goals: The fight for reproductive justice is a universal struggle that affects everyone. By framing the movement around shared goals—bodily autonomy, economic justice, and social equality—we can bring together diverse communities to create a powerful, united front that challenges the systems of control.
Reproductive Justice as the Key to Collective Freedom
Reproductive justice is not a narrow issue confined to pregnancy or abortion—it is the key to achieving collective freedom. By exposing the insecurities of power and dismantling the structures that limit bodily autonomy, we move closer to a society where everyone has the right to make decisions about their bodies free from coercion, stigma, or control.
Through inclusive language, solidarity across movements, and a commitment to redistributing labor and challenging moral narratives, we can break the hold that patriarchy, capitalism, and religious institutions have over reproductive rights. Reproductive justice is not just about access to healthcare or the right to choose—it is about creating a future where bodily autonomy is respected, caregiving is valued, and power is no longer concentrated in the hands of a few.
The fight for reproductive justice is a fight for freedom, dignity, and justice for all. By dismantling the expectations-based culture and rejecting the systems that control reproductive bodies, we build a society where autonomy is a universal right, and reproductive justice is accessible to everyone.
In doing so, we expose power’s vulnerabilities and create a future where freedom is shared, not hoarded, and justice is available to all, not just the privileged few.