From Choice to Justice: Disrupting the Binary Political Logics of Assisted Reproduction

Abstract

Reproductive rights and reproductive justice paradigms have long been viewed as incompatible, largely because of their divergent orientations to the notion of choice. According to this oppositional framing, reproductive rights approaches have centered the right of (white, middle-class, heterosexual) women to choose not to have children while reproductive justice organizing has focused on gendered, racialized, and classed obstacles to control over whether and how to have and raise children. Amid increasing examination of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) vis-à-vis human rights principles, I see an opportunity to narrow the perceived gap between the politics of rights and justice. Human rights organizations and scholars are recognizing the stratification of medical infertility rates and ART access, and human rights courts are articulating the right to assisted reproduction as part of a fundamental right to reproductive health. In reframing the opportunity to choose assisted reproduction as a justice issue, I seek to unsettle the traditional bifurcation of these political logics.