The Fight for Reproductive Justice After Dobbs: Race and Reproduction as Carceral Tools

This paper analyzes how race and reproductive healthcare are used as carceral tools of racial oppression that emanate from slavery. I argue that both mass incarceration and the denial of reproductive health services for Black women must be abolished as a way of abolishing vestiges of slavery. Part II contextualizes the historical control of Black women’s bodies throughout slavery and Jim Crow and into mass incarceration. Part III examines the history of unequal access to reproductive healthcare for Black women before Roe v. Wade, and how the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision disproportionately discriminates against Black women. Part IV demonstrates that prisons control Black women’s reproductive autonomy as a tool of racial oppression, employing tactics from slavery. Part V analyzes the Court’s role in maintaining a gendered and racial hierarchy via the control of women’s reproductive autonomy and criticizes current Eighth Amendment jurisprudence for failing to consider institutional racism.