Abstract
In June 2021, Britney Spears made headlines when she testified to a judge that she was being prevented from having children because her conservator would not allow her to stop using contraception. Britney Spears’s dreadful experiences are a glaring reminder that nearly 100 years after the infamous Buck v. Bell decision, reproduction is still weaponized to subjugate people with disabilities. Indeed, the reproductive oppression experienced by Britney Spears and other people with actual or perceived disabilities is deeply entrenched in our laws, in our policies, and in our collective conscience. Confronting these persistent inequities will require us to radically transform our laws and policies. This Essay responds to the ongoing reproductive injustice experienced by disabled people by proposing a vision to assist activists, legal professionals, scholars, and policymakers conceive of and articulate the basic contours of a paradigm shift that supports the coalescence of the reproductive justice and disability justice movements. The guiding principles set forth herein are intended to advance a long-overdue conversation about reproductive justice for people with disabilities by providing a starting point for activists, scholars, legal professionals, and policymakers to use, critique, and improve upon. The need for action could not be more timely or clear.
Share with your community
About the Author
Robyn M. Powell is an Assistant Professor of Law at Stetson University College of Law. Her research explores the intersections of disability law, reproductive justice, family regulation, public health law, and constitutional law. Grounded in disability justice, her work interrogates how legal and policy systems shape the lives of disabled people, often by reinforcing exclusion, inequality, and surveillance through ostensibly neutral frameworks. Dr. Powell’s legal scholarship has been published in many of the nation’s top law reviews, including the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, California Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, UC Davis Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Michigan Law Review, and Washington University Law Review, among others. Her work has shaped scholarly conversations around reproductive rights in the post-Dobbs era, the treatment of disabled parents in the child welfare system, and the structural role of law in reinforcing ableism across legal institutions. At Stetson, Dr. Powell teaches Disability Law, Professional Responsibility, Torts, and Public Health Law. She previously held faculty appointments at the University of Oklahoma College of Law and Boston University School of Law. She earned her J.D. from Suffolk University Law School and her Ph.D. in Social Policy from Brandeis University. Her scholarship is deeply informed by her lived experience as a disabled woman and is committed to advancing justice through critical legal inquiry and transformative reform.
Leave a Reply