By Feminist Research on Violence Collective.

Elizabeth Downer, Susana Draper, Alejandra Estigarribia, Silvia Federici, Anna Fox, Lewanne Jones, Jesal Kapadia, Belén Marco-Crespo, Alice Markham-Cantor, and Begonia Santa-Cecilia.

A pamphlet where we look at the criminalization of pregnancy, to highlight by what means this new war on women is being waged, what it represents, who it targets, and how we can struggle against it. Our argument, following that of Dorothy Roberts in Killing the Black Body (1997), is that the ‘criminalization of pregnancy,’ though justified in the name of the defense of life, is actually a case of ‘maternity denied.’ A core tenet of the reproductive justice movement, founded and developed by Black women, is the idea that true justice ensures not only that one has the right not to have a child, but that one has the right to have a child and to raise that child in a safe world. Black women-led reproductive justice organizations like SisterSong have long called attention to the issue of maternity denied. (In the last section of this pamphlet, we reference just a few of the organizations doing this crucial work.) Download the pamphlet here.