Reproductive Justice is Disability Justice

In May 2022, the people of the United States learned that the Supreme Court planned to overturn Roe v. Wade, a 1973 ruling that makes abortion access safe and legal. 

For years we’ve watched state after state pass increasingly restrictive legislation on abortion. Sins Invalid knows that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, disabled people of color and queer and trans disabled people will be among the populations most harmed by lack of abortion access and reproductive healthcare. 

Ableism’s isolating impact means disabled people are already less likely to find safe options to terminate pregnancies. This context, along with the struggle of disabled people to obtain comprehensive sex education and healthcare, means that the overturning of Roe v. Wade, like the abortion bans that came before it, will be catastrophic for disabled folks.

On one hand, the fear of disability has been used as a tool to manipulate people’s reproductive choices, sometimes causing people to opt for selective abortions to avoid disability, which is in fact eugenics. Simultaneously, disabled people have been forced to terminate pregnancies under the pretense that we cannot be good parents because we are disabled.

The United States’ violent control and oppression of people’s bodies did not begin with the supreme court’s targeting of Roe v. Wade. Attacks on bodily autonomy long predate this moment through conquest and colonization of Indigenous lands and practices, through the dehumanization of chattel slavery, and through the torture of Black people. 

We have seen this through the infliction of boarding/retraining schools on Indigenous people. We have witnessed state-sponsored eugenics programs in 32 states and Puerto Rico. The forced sterilization of incarcerated people, disabled people, and immigrants are direct violations of human rights.

We have seen state violence and oppression in the constant undermining of Black enterprises and the epidemic of violence against Black trans women and trans women of color. Historical attempts to control bodies the government sees as “deviant” show that bodily autonomy and reproductive justice are human rights issues. 

Attempts to ban abortion inevitably lead to non-consensual conversations about women, intersex, trans, and non-binary people’s bodies. In these discussions, we must remember how disability justice values an intersectional analysis which requires us to consider the complexities of reproductive justice in the context of ableism. 

Abortions will occur regardless of whether they are legal or not, but these laws are an act of violence. Choosing whether and when to become a parent is a basic principle of reproductive justice. 

Poor and working-class people will be unable to negotiate around the legislation and instead will be forced into unsafe practices to terminate their pregnancies. Pregnant people have already been criminalized and imprisoned for miscarriage or having been perceived to terminate their pregnancies, and these laws will only incarcerate more vulnerable populations. 

These laws and rulings harm communities of color, as Black and brown people are always disproportionately impacted by criminalization. This attack on Roe v. Wade exists to fill America’s jails and prisons with unpaid labor, separate families through incarceration, and feed the unjust foster care machine.

The courts may try to control our bodies, but women, non-binary, trans, and disabled people are not objects to be contained or manipulated. We are human beings that deserve care and choices, and we will not allow our autonomy to be denied. 

Sins Invalid fully supports each individual making the reproductive choices that best suit their context and needs. Access to information, quality healthcare, and autonomy in decision making are essential for the well-being of all. Everybody deserves autonomy and the right to make the best choice for themselves and their futures. Reproductive justice is disability justice.