Reproductive Justice, Vaccine Refusal, and the Uneven Landscape of Choice

• In Event: 505 - Regular Session. Sociology of Reproduction: Reproductive Governance

Abstract

Public health campaigns support uniform interventions to improve the health of communities. Yet these state-sponsored programs often contradict individual preference and choice. This paper takes two disparate cases from public health—vaccines and family planning—that reveal patterns of inequality in who has access to individual choice and who requires state support to exercise choice. Vaccines, required for school attendance, are most often challenged by privileged parents who insist on their personal freedoms and freedom from state regulation. Unintended pregnancies and serious complications of pregnancy, most often experienced by low income women and women of color, require public investment of resources to improve outcomes—greater state support. Both these public health questions have been framed popularly as questions of individual choice, even as public health outcomes—to contain infectious disease and improve pregnancy outcomes—are not individual in result. This paper demonstrates how choice is most accessible to those with the most resources and argues that reliance on the rhetoric of individual choice as an expression of freedom fails to make sure that all members of the community have the resources to shape their own outcomes, or to make sure our collective health is protected. Looking specifically at tensions over funding and compulsion, it identifies the importance of more balance between community responsibility and individual preference that requires adequate public investment in the support of each.

Author

• Jennifer A. Reich, University of Colorado Denver