WGST and LGBTQ Studies Joint Statement Condemning Dobbs v. Jackson Women鈥檚 Health Organization decision
We, the faculty of the Department of Women and听Gender Studies and the Certificate Program in LGBTQ Studies, strongly condemn the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women鈥檚 Health Organization. The ruling, issued on June 24, 2022, eliminates the constitutional right to an abortion, almost 50 years after the landmark Roe v. Wade case secured federal protections for it. We are saddened and outraged as we anticipate the cascading effects of this ruling, particularly as it will most devastatingly impact Black, Indigenous, and Latinx women, and other w
We draw from the developed by Black women, Women of Color, and other nonbinary and trans People of Color, which calls for us to situate this latest attack on abortion on a longer continuum of reproductive injustice, including histories of forced sterilization, lack of access to contraception and family planning, and inhumane conditions of pregnancy and childbirth in US jails and prisons and in countries impacted by US imperial wars. We locate this ruling within a larger trend toward austerity measures that severely curtail the right to live a full and dignified life, including a shrinking social safety net, lack of access to state-supported childcare, and growing food insecurity in the wake of a pandemic that has forced record numbers of women out of the workplace.
While this moment is being framed as a to pre-Roe days, we must also be attentive to how it heralds new efforts to surveil bodies seen as unruly and criminalize those who seek agency and self-determination over their own bodies, whether the right to decide whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term, the right to parent a child i