18/12/2025
We need to talk about how women/PwM, especially those deemed morally or socially deviant, are subjected to state control over reproduction in the name of “public welfare”. Although one could argue overt eugenic practices are less visible today (heh, are they really though?), the moral logic behind them has yet to be stomped out.
As we learned this year in my series “The State of Body Literacy,” contemporary legal battles over prenatal conduct cannot be fully explained by property interests or state power alone. They reflect a deeper impulse to punish “vice” and social status.
Whether it was Mercedes Wells, the Black woman who went to the hospital in Indiana in labor and was turned away, only to give birth unassisted in her car a few minutes later… or the case of Adriana Smith, who was denied medical care only to die while pregnant in Georgia where her body was force-kept on life support until her fetus was able to be extracted via c-section… these are present day reminders to all of us that law often serves society’s desire for moral vengeance, punishing women's/PwM's behavior or conduct not because it causes direct harm, but because it violates perceived moral norms.
This passage, from Policing the Womb, is powerful. Law can normalize cruelty when it aligns with dominant moral anxieties. Punishment of pregnant women/PwM is less about genuine health prevention and more about channeling collective resentment toward those who symbolize disorder or moral failure. Women/PwM are always targets. Especially so if they are non-white.
Legal systems rely on scapegoating vulnerable women to reaffirm social values. Pregnant women who are poor, addicted, or otherwise marginalized become visible embodiments of “vice,” making them convenient targets for public discipline. We must understand what we are up against, that society has an almost insatiable social appetite for moral punishment, one that the law too often legitimizes rather than restrains.
TLDR; they're coming at us from ALL angles. We have to stay prepared to support each other.
I hope to continue my advocacy for our most marginalized women, menstruators, and birthers, we are really all we got out here!
