Birth Justice

Reproductive injustice is an urgent global problem. We are faced with the increased criminalization of abortion, higher maternal and neonatal mortality rates for people of color, and more and more research addressing the structural nature of obstetric violence. In this collection of essays, the cause of reproductive injustice is understood as the institutionalized isolation of (potentially) pregnant people, making them vulnerable for bio- and necropolitical disciplination and control. The central thesis of this book is that reproductive justice must be achieved through a radical reappropriation of relationality in reproductive care to safeguard the access to knowledge and care needed for safe bodily self-determination. Through empirical research as well as decolonial, feminist, midwifery, and Black theory, reproductive justice is reimagined as abolitionist care, grounded in the abolition of authoritative obstetric institutions, state control of reproduction, and restrictive abortion laws in favor of community practices that are truly relational.

Rodante van der Waal is a midwife and philosopher. Their academic articles have been published in a.o. Frontiers, Angelaki, Agenda, Feminist Anthropology, Feminist Theory, PLoS ONE, Social Text, Birth, Technophany Nursing Ethics and Violence Against Women.

Acknowledgements, Introduction, Theoretical Framework. Reproductive Justice To-Come, Part I. Obstetric Violence and Obstetric Racism in the Netherlands, Intermezzo. A people's tribunal on obstetric violence and obstetric racism, 1. Shroud waving self-determination: a qualitative analysis of the moral and epistemic dimensions of obstetric violence in the Netherlands, 2. Obstetric racism as necropolitical disinvestment of care: how uneven reproduction in the Netherlands is effectuated through linguistic racism, exoticization, and stereotypes, 3. Obstetric violence within students' rite of passage: the reproduction of the obstetric subject and its racialised (m)other, Part II. The Separation of Reproductive Relationality Intermezzo. Abortion scene from Portrait de la Jeune Fille en Feu, 4. Hacking Reproductive Justice: Solomon's judgment and the captive maternal, 5. The 'dead baby card' and the early modern accusation of infanticide: Situating obstetric violence in the bio- and necropolitics of reproduction, 6. Reimagining relationality for reproductive care: Understanding obstetric violence as separation, Part III. Abolitionist Care, 7. The undercommons of childbirth and their abolitionist ethic of care: a study into obstetric violence among mothers, midwives (in training), and doulas, 8. Obstetric Violence: An Intersectional Refraction through Abolition Feminism, 9. Undercommoning anthrogenesis: abolitionist care for reproductive justice, Part IV. Reimagining Reproduction, 10. Specter(s) of care: A symposium on midwifery, relationality, and reproductive justice to-come, 11. Somatophilic reproductive justice: on technology, feminist biological materialism, and midwifery thinking, 12. When the egg breaks, the chicken bleeds: unsettling coloniality through fertility in Lispector's The Passion According to G.H. and The Chronicles, Conclusion, Bibliography