The debate, as it is usually staged.
Two camps. Pro-choice against pro-life. The question is whether a woman has the right to end a pregnancy. The arena is the courtroom and the ballot box. The stakes are framed as individual: a single woman, a single decision, a single moment.
The protagonist of this debate, almost always, is a cis white woman who is imagined to be middle-class enough to drive to a clinic and pay out of pocket. The villain, depending on which side you're on, is either the state or the woman herself.
In June 2022, Dobbs v. Jackson overturned Roe v. Wade. The headlines tell a story of a right won and then lost: of a binary culture war reaching its endpoint. Both sides claim to be the defenders of life or freedom. Both sides act as if the whole question fits inside that one word: abortion.
It's a familiar story. It is also, the scholars Leandra Hinojosa Hernández and Sarah De Los Santos Upton argue, a story that has been wrong about who it is for from the very beginning.
What this framing leaves out
- • Anyone who wants to have a child but cannot safely do so.
- • Anyone whose children are taken, surveilled, deported, or criminalized.
- • The history of the U.S. state coercing some people NOT to reproduce.
- • Trans, nonbinary, and queer people who get pregnant.
- • Disabled people, whose fertility has been managed by others for over a century.