Shared Futures or Financialized Futures? Polygenic Screening, Reproductive Justice and the Radical Charge of Collective Care, Signs Journal, Denbow and Spira, 2023 (original) (raw)
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American Literary History
Reviewed by Asha Nadkarni, University of Massachusetts Amherst The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed many stark and longstanding fault lines. Communities of color within the US have been disproportionately impacted by the virus, with Black people dying at 1.4 times the rate of white people, and indigenous and Latinx communities likewise experiencing much higher death rates. Meanwhile, as the wealthiest become wealthier, those within vulnerable populations suffer from unemployment, food and housing insecurity, and police violence. And for all who must balance work with family care, whether it be of children or elders, the long-brewing calamity of reproductive labor has come to a head. If, as Laura Briggs muses in her How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics (2017), of who is watching the kids is only a snow day or summer vacation away from near-then the last year has made such crises daily affairs.
American Literary History, 2022
Reviewed by Asha Nadkarni, University of Massachusetts Amherst The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed many stark and longstanding fault lines. Communities of color within the US have been disproportionately impacted by the virus, with Black people dying at 1.4 times the rate of white people, and indigenous and Latinx communities likewise experiencing much higher death rates. Meanwhile, as the wealthiest become wealthier, those within vulnerable populations suffer from unemployment, food and housing insecurity, and police violence. And for all who must balance work with family care, whether it be of children or elders, the long-brewing calamity of reproductive labor has come to a head. If, as Laura Briggs muses in her How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics (2017), of who is watching the kids is only a snow day or summer vacation away from near-then the last year has made such crises daily affairs.
The Politics of Reproduction: Adoption, Abortion, and Surrogacy in the Age of Neoliberalism
2019
WE ARE indebted to many whose support and encouragement have made this volume possible. We want to express our deep gratitude, even if we are unable to name them all here. At Ohio State University Press, our editor, Kristen Elias Rowley, has provided guidance, support, and advice throughout the process. The book would not have been possible without her enthusiasm and encouragement from the start. We thank her for her help in seeing this project through to completion. Sincere thanks to Tara Cyphers for her keen eye and sound advice in the final stages of the book's preparation. We would like to thank our anonymous reviewers, who understood the political and intellectual stakes of the volume, for their generous and perspicacious feedback, which pushed us to answer our questions and to galvanize the volume's focus. Our collaboration would not have been possible without the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI), and that organization's founder and force of nature, Andrea O'Reilly. We are grateful for her capacious understanding of "mothers, mothering, and motherhood" that includes all facets of reproduction. We wish to acknowledge the generous support of our departments and deans' offices at James Madison University and Tufts University. We thank JMU College of Arts and Letters Faculty Mini-Grants and Faculty Research x • ACkNOwLEdgMENTS Awards Committee Grants-in-Aid, Tufts University, for providing funding for manuscript preparation. We are indebted to the contributors to this volume for their hard work and commitment to reproductive politics. Special thanks to Kate Walters for allowing us to use her evocative painting for the cover, and to Matthew White for his meticulous work on indexing the volume. Modhumita would like to thank her "middle-aged brigade, " Pilar Bartley, Goizane Suengas, and Heiddis Valdimarsdottir, for always being there. A very warm thank you to her sister, Anindita Raj Bakshi, who broke the rules first and showed the way. Thanks also to comrade and mentor Malini Bhattacharya for her encouragement, and to Paromita Chakravarti for her irreverent wit and sustaining friendship. And, of course, the late, great Jasodhara Bagchi, fiery feminist and friend, whose work continues to inspire. A grateful thank you to Abha Sur for filling her with delicious meals and provocative ideas. Modhumita also wants to thank friends and colleagues at Tufts University, especially Sonia Hofkosh and Elizabeth Ammons, for enriching her intellectual and personal life. Sincere thanks to Douglas Riggs, Jennifer LeBlanc, and Wendy Medeiros, in the English office, for their patience and help with temperamental computers and other sundry machines and for many everyday acts of support and kindness. Mary would like to thank her inspiring coworkers at The Center for Choice (1983-2013) for their fearless dedication to abortion access, boundless compassion, and bawdy/body humor. Gratitude is also due to Carol Yoder, her running partner, for her generous spirit, good humor, and for lending an earmile after mile. She also thanks her feministy colleagues and friends-Jessica Davidson, Dawn Goode, Kristin Wylie, Becca Howes-Mischel, Debali Mookerjea-Leonard, and AJ Morey-for their sustaining conversations and support. Last but not least she thanks Olive the pit bull, and sweet, loyal Blondie, who ungrudgingly awaits-from her position directly behind the office chair-a promised walk. And, finally, we would like to express our love, gratitude, and thanks to our families, and especially, to our mothers, Barbara J. Thompson and Pranati Roy, to whom this volume is dedicated.
2019
The history of forced sterilization and the American cultural agreement with this practice robbed women of color of control of their own bodies, destinies, and communities. Negative eugenics as genetic proof of low intelligence, low possibility, and low productivity fed the system of compulsory sterilization even though the science proved faulty and incorrect. As advances in medical technology and genetic science increases, eugenics is making a return into the American psyche. Vulnerable populations which include women of color make reproduction and the subsequent control of their bodies vulnerable once again. The Reproductive Justice Movement is a collaboration of organized women of color who fight for the full range of reproductive rights, health services, and parenting options for women. The movement formed by the group SisterSong, forged partnerships based on an expanded vision of reproductive rights beyond pro-choice or pro-life politics. The Movement produced a "March for Women's Lives" which is the largest single civil rights march in the history of the v United States. One major strategic move was the decision to position reproductive rights as "human rights with a connection to the UNESCO Declaration on Human Rights. It is necessary to ethically justify their framework according to traditional health care ethics principles. The framework was also analyzed against the traditional protections for women of color who are medical research subjects and who are vulnerable according to their intersectionality. vi DEDICATION I humbly submit this work in dedication to my grandmother Bernice and her loving sisters who provided love and nurture for me, but who were never able to have children of their own. I dedicate this work to my husband, the Rev. Dr. John C. Welch who has always gone before me and lead me through and who carried me when I could go no further. To my gifts called my children: Aja, Jordan, John Christopher, and Ian, who are also my greatest teachers. To my grandchildren: Ayauna, Genesis, and Aiden, may you see this as motivation and proof that you can do anything you set your mind and heart to do. To Florence, Darlene, Phyllis, Mrs. Diggs, and Audrey, and my Bidwell Church family, who fed me, prayed for me, and encouraged me; I dedicate this work as gratitude for all the time you granted me to write. To the countless women of color who were robbed of the ability to have children, because of this project, I consider you all my mothers. To my God whose leading felt at times like holy inspiration, I am eternally grateful. vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I want to acknowledge the committed detailed work provided by Dr. Henk ten Have, my dissertation advisor and Dr. Gerard Magill, who encouraged me even beyond the writing of this project. Many thanks to Glory Smith for her keeping me on schedule and kept me on task. I also want to acknowledge retired professor Dr. Moni McIntyre, who challenged me to write on a graduate level and refused to accept any work from me that appeared to be less than that. viii
“Thinking about Reproductive Justice”
Art, Women, Race, and Class Reading Group: Read/Gathered/Discussed Angela Davis’s Women, Race, and Class (1981) at University Art Museum, 2019
Commentary based on Angela Davis's “Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights” (In Davis, Angela. 1983 [1981]. Women, Race, and Class. New York: Vintage Books), University Art Museum, University at Albany.