In “Reproductive injustice and the ‘War on Women,’ or an ode to the intersections,” Eesha Pandit draws attention to the profound limitations of mainstream feminist reproductive politics, which emphasize access to contraception, abortion, and other reproductive health services, but do not take other reproductive injustices that specifically affect incarcerated women, as well as “trans women … poor women of color, immigrant women, queer women, and native women.” Pandit asks,
Who, we must ask, are the “women” in the “war on women” that many feminist organizations are decrying? Are they the women forcibly sterilized at the hands of the state? Are they the trans women that face repeated acts of aggression in the form of hate crimes and at the hands of law-enforcement officials? Are they poor women of color, immigrant women, queer women, and native women navigating a foster system that makes the right to have a family a matter of demonstrating fitness to parent? Are they queer immigrant women fighting to keep their families together while navigating a punitive and racist immigration system? Who are those women? Am I one?
How does Pandit challenge mainstream feminists to think more expansively about reproductive rights? What do you think of her argument?