Conceiving Reproductive Justice in Social Studies Education

• In Event: And some will speak...

Abstract

In this qualitative paper, I argue that social studies education must meaningfully engage with reproductive rights and histories. Drawing on conceptual analyses of state standards through a theoretical framework of reproductive justice, I explore how the standards represent and elide reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, and democratic freedom. The results illustrate how the key principles of reproductive justice–the right to have children, not to have children, and the parent in safe and sustainable communities–can currently be found in state standards. This paper contributes to the field by providing a framework and area of content that have long been ignored in social studies education but which is central to the field’s democratic aims.

Author

• Rebecca Cooper Geller, University of Georgia