This seminar series follows the historic decision of the US Supreme Court to overturn the landmark 1973 abortion rights decision of Roe v. Wade on 24 June 2022, and the most significant revision of UK fertility law (HFEA) in decades. Following this seismic shift in the reproductive landscape of the US and, by extension, across the globe, it is more important than ever to provide a robust response as an academic community through both impactful critical analysis and strategic community building across disciplinary boundaries and institutional borders.
In this historic moment, it is key to revisit the notion of reproductive justice. Conceptualised by Black women activists in response to the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development who sought to uplift the position of the “most marginalised women, families and communities,” reproductive justice positions the struggle for abortion rights within a broader set of concerns.
Reproductive justice, located within a matrix of oppressions that shape reproduction (e.g., racism, sexism, classism), is defined as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.” Beyond a question of a curtailing of abortion rights in the US, we approach this Post-Roe moment from global perspectives, in relation to other reproductive technologies and as intersecting with race and queer politics.
The Reproductive Justice seminar series is co-hosted by the King’s Gender Studies Network and the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine's Reproduction research cluster.
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Assistant Professor Anindita Majumdar (Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad) shares her insights into the uses and abuses of marriage and commitment as tropes to bolster the desire for seeking assisted reproduction in India.