A mother of three has been sent to prison for ending a pregnancy and Britain is in uproar. Radio stations are rolling out condone-or-condemn debates on the woman’s choice to end her pregnancy. Feminists on Twitter are contrasting the length of her sentence with the average time men serve for rape. But, amid the outrage, aren’t we missing something startlingly obvious?
This is a chilling reminder of the state’s power to police both women’s pregnancies and their right to be mothers, and a flexing of the cruelty that the state is willing to inflict on mothers – and consequently, the children who depend on their care.
The woman’s case is a bleak indictment of reproductive justice in Britain. Reproductive justice, coined by Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice in 1994, is “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities”.
