Public Education and Reproductive Justice

• In Event: Challenging Education: Overcoming Exclusion/Inclusion Paradoxes in Postsecondary Education, Advocating for Reproductive Justice in Public Education, and Navigating Intersectional Precarity as U.S. Teachers Abroad

Abstract

The primary purpose of this paper is to offer a reading of contemporary debates about public education, particularly those regarding sex education, critical race theory, and trans rights in schools in the United States, through a reproductive justice lens. I thus ask: what can we learn about public education by situating it as essential to the possibility of reproductive justice and how might these lessons help inform attempts to defend public education and reproductive rights during such resistance? I ultimately argue that attacks on public education are part of a broader effort to control and delimit reproduction and to codify white supremacist, patriarchal, neoliberal desires for control over populations at all levels of government. I conclude by discussing the potential benefits of such a reframing for activists and scholars interested in either of these justice issues.

Author

• Caitlin Howlett, DePauw University