At the Borders of the Body Politic: Fetal Citizens, Pregnant Migrants, and Reproductive Injustices in Immigration Detention

To analyze intersecting power relations in reproductive and immigration politics, I examine Garza v. Hargan (an appellate case regarding unaccompanied immigrant minors’ abortion rights) alongside systemic injustices in immigration detention (e.g. exposure to miscarriage risks, coerced sterilization, shackling). These injustices, I argue, emerge from conflicts and compromises over fetal citizenship within the American radical Right. Although pro-life and anti-immigrant discourses assume opposing logics of citizenship, respectively interpreting immigrants’ fetuses as “fetal citizens” or “anchor babies,” these contradictions are neutralized by two techniques. Debilitation (systematic degradation of a disposable population) enables the appearance of fetal protection to coexist with de facto exposure to death, injury, and risk. Paralegality (quasi-legal policymaking by enforcement agents) allows situational shifts in the meaning of fetal citizenship and adjustments to the pro-life/anti-immigrant compromise. Both obscure culpability for reproductive injustice, reinforce interlocking oppressions, and control women’s bodies in order to control the body politic’s demographic future.

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Should the remains of aborted fetuses be treated as human corpses or medical waste? How can feminists defend abortion rights without erasing the experiences of women who mourn fetal death or lending support to pro-life constructions of fetal personhood? To answer these questions, I trace the role of abjection and mourning in debates over fetal remains disposal regulations. Critiquing pro-life views of fetal personhood while challenging feminists to develop richer and more compelling accounts of fetal remains, I argue that embracing the ambiguity and diversity of pregnant bodies can strengthen rather than undermine reproductive autonomy. I conceptualize reproductive autonomy relationally, contending that it entails the pregnant subject’s authority to construct as well as interpret her lived body, including the fetus. Additionally, because the embodied self is inextricable from social context, reproductive autonomy also requires community support. To support these claims, I develop an account of pregnant bodies as ontologically multiple and advocate embracing abjection rather than suppressing it. Finally, I object to fetal remains regulations because they inscribe fetal grievability into the law.

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Part of a Symposium on Backlash and the Future of Feminism, this paper critiques conceptions of backlash by challenging interpretations of the contemporary American pro-life movement as a paradigmatic example of backlash against feminism. Instead, I argue that pro-life discourse presents neo-patriarchal visions of the future that go beyond defenses of the status quo or reactionary hopes to return to the past. Specifically, I examine Americans United for Life's "Mother-Child Strategy," which attempts to articulate the fetal right to life as consistent with women's equality. This strategy engages feminist and other liberal or left messaging in complicated ways, and it goes beyond backlash by developing its own ethical principles and novel visions of the future. Preventing the realization of these neo-patriarchal futures will require feminists to actively counter the substantive elements in pro-life discourse as well as foregrounding feminist critiques of neoliberal capitalism.

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