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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Rickie Solinger, PhD, independent scholar, historian, 6 Spies Road, New Paltz, NY 12561, 845 255 5559, rsolinger@hvc.rr.com

Throughout the history of the United States, a woman's race and class has always made it more or less likely that she had access to what she needed to manage her reproductive capacity, and more or less likely that the public would praise, tolerate, or condemn her reproductive activity. The creation of the race system, the maintenance of the slavery system, the construction of U.S. poverty policy, and other structures have all depended on laws and policies governing the reproductive lives of different groups of women differently. Today, when we talk about reproductive matters as issues of “choice,” we show how thoroughly this difficult history has been effaced, even as it continues to infect the present. Policymakers and ordinary people dilute the possibility of reproductive justice or reproductive rights, deploying the consumerist concept of “choice” and distinguishing between middle class women as “good choice-makers,” and poor women, marked as persistently making “bad choices.”

Learning Objectives:

• Define "reproductive politics"
• Assess the relationship between reproductive rights/justice and "choice"
• Evaluate the policy consequences of the mainstream use of the term "choice," especially regarding differential impacts depending on race and class

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation