When states coerce and force women, girls and people with the capacity for pregnancy to remain pregnant against their will, they create human chattel and incubators of them. Today, Texas, Mississippi and other states with ‘trigger’ bans make clear that the essences of chattel bondage and the draft have returned, but only for women, girls and pregnant-capable people.
Author: Michele Goodwin
Michele Goodwin holds the chancellor’s professorship at the University of California, Irvine. Goodwin is the host and executive producer of podcast "On the Issues with Michele Goodwin." She is also the founder and director the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy and its Reproductive Justice Initiative. She has published with Forbes, Salon, L.A. Times, Politico, Chicago Sun Times, Houston Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times, among others. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.
Coercing Rape Survivors to Be Pregnant for the State—The Texas Way
Texas has one of the nation’s highest rape rates. Shockingly, its newest near-total abortion ban contains no exceptions for rape or incest. When asked about this, Gov. Greg Abbott said, “Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas.”
Abbott’s disturbing pledge fits in line with a tried-and-true political strategy: claim to address a public health issue by pivoting to crime control. But as history has taught us, public health crises will not be solved in the prosecutor’s office or by claiming to be tough on crime.
Danger in the Shadows: Supreme Court Uses Shadow Docket to Threaten Abortion Rights
Reproductive rights—once perceived to be a hallmark of late 20th-century American democracy—may soon give way to conservative states enacting unconstitutional anti-abortion provisions with procedural barriers so thickly and cleverly intertwined that the ability to challenge them may be unattainable, including at the Supreme Court.
The result of the Court’s shadow docket opinion is not just an end, essentially, to the legal right to an abortion in Texas—it sets in motion a workable blueprint for all other conservative state legislatures bent on stripping away abortion rights.
The Texas Abortion Ban Is History Revisited
Aspects of Texas’s new six-week abortion law are eerily reminiscent of the Fugitive Slave Acts, which traumatized Black people for fear of being tracked, stalked and charged with violating the codes of slavery.
Texas has stepped into a dangerous zone that not only undermines the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy—but now calls for the worst in citizen action.
Women’s Health Protection Act: Congress Has a Moral and Legal Obligation to Protect Abortion Access
Dr. Michele Goodwin testified powerfully in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution on the urgency of the Women’s Health Protection Act in addressing racial, gender, legal and health disparities.
“Reproductive justice requires every individual to have the right to make their own decisions about having children regardless of their circumstances and without interference and discrimination.”
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Triggers and Trauma: The Hidden Health Effects of Racism [Part III, Who Killed George Floyd?]
Racism manifested by police stops, microaggressions at work, discriminatory and hostile treatment while shopping for groceries and doing other innocuous tasks, and systemic inequalities in housing and education take an enormous toll—both physically and psychologically.
![Policing In America: A Deadly Disease Rooted in Slavery [Who Killed George Floyd? Part II]](https://msmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Policing-In-America_-A-Deadly-Disease-Rooted-in-Slavery-Who-Killed-George-Floyd_-Part-II-270x145.png)
Policing In America: A Deadly Disease Rooted in Slavery [Who Killed George Floyd? Part II]
Policing is part of America’s origin story and its history of enslavement, kidnapping and trafficking of Black people.
This article is the second installment in a three-part series examining police violence as symptomatic of broader social and cultural injustice, racism and anti-Blackness—including in one of America’s most liberal communities.
Who Killed George Floyd? Hidden Truths About Midwestern Racism
“In many ways, Minnesota and Wisconsin have become the new south. The disparities we’re seeing rival anything in the Jim Crow era.”
This article is the first installment in a three-part series that asks what can we learn from officer-involved killings, which on their own can appear isolated and disconnected from larger social conditions and cultural dynamics.
Rest in Power: Sue Ellen Allen, Advocate to the End
On Feb. 24, the world lost a bright light whose fiery passion matched her signature red hair: my friend, Sue Ellen Allen.
Indefatigable. Courageous breast cancer survivor. Former inmate. Humble. Gracious. Generous. Vulnerable.
The Forgotten Reproductive Justice Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King
Dr. King described family planning as “a special and urgent concern.”
The contrasts between the conversations taking place in the public sphere now versus then are striking. Dr. King would likely be horrified by the state’s oversized role in determining how and when women can control their reproductive health.