Political Contestation and Rights Revision: Addressing Reproductive Injustice

The field of birth is part of a reproductive borderland that contains a vast range of political and social contestations. In Canada, these contestations extend in many directions and cover topics such as “medicalization” of pregnancy and childbirth, overconsumption of medical intervention, idealization of normal birth (creating a “normal birth culture” (Reproductive Health Work Group, 2018: 15)), reproductive choice (including abortion), and informed consent. These examples rely on conceptions of individual autonomy and agency for their realization in practice. Other topics, such as birth alerts (the practice whereby child protective services notifies hospital authorities when a “high risk” maternal or reproductive subject is about to give birth) and involuntary sterilization, can be located in the shadowy areas of the borderlands and operationalize conceptions of reproductive justice. In this paper I will explore these contestations in order to demonstrate that reproductive borderlands are not just fraught political and policy spaces, but often polarized in terms of their rights orientations. The WHO (2018) recommends that birth care take a “holistic, human rights approach,” which suggests the integration of possessive, individual rights and reproductive justice approaches. However, state actors tend to focus on the former and avoid the latter, likely because reproductive justice frameworks demand attention to the (political) complexities of structural violence. In addition to the empirical examination of contestations, I will provide a theoretical rebuilding of reproductive rights and justice approaches as a way to further draw attention to problematic areas and contradictions, but also to present a more coherent theory for addressing reproductive injustice.