The Impossibility of Humanity: Abortion, Rhetoric of “Life,” and the Black Female Body

• In Event: DFC Sponsored: Analyzing the Criminalization of Reproduction: Strategies, Implications, and Resistance

Abstract

This paper is an examination of how “humanity” and “personhood” in anti-abortion debates have historically been defined in ways that assert White supremacist and patriarchal ideas of what “life” gets protected. The recent anti-abortion laws in several states have expanded to include surveillance incentives and enhanced criminalization measures for women who fall under the legal language of “abortion,” including miscarriages. Once case that became emblematic of this troubling legislation is Brittany Watts, a Black woman who was forced to carry an inviable fetus, went to an ER when she miscarried where her attending nurse called police on her for violating the state’s abortion law. Watt’s case is enmeshed in historical themes of policing Black women’s bodies, hyper-surveillance and criminalization in pursuit of protecting those deemed as “human.” This paper will utilize intersectional criminology and Black feminist approaches to understanding how “living being” is defined in these abortion laws with a critical focus of cases like Watts and others, at the intersection of gender, race, and other disenfranchises identities.

Author

• Cassandra Young, University of Denver