Reproductive Rights, Sexuality, and Racial Injustice: Eugenics, Medicalization, and the Path to Reproductive Justice

Eugenics and Racial Injustice

Eugenics operates as a discursive practice by medicalizing, or pathologizing, racialized bodies through the logic of biological determinism, asserting that so-called “inferior” traits are inheritable in the field of medical knowledge, which is deeply intertwined with racialized ideologies during the birth control movement (though framed as feminist movement). These ideologies are constructed beliefs that one racial group is inherently superior to others based on superficial bodily differences, but interpretated through essentialized account. Such beliefs are then embedded into social and institutional structures, perpetuating the illusion of their validity, and normalizing their impact within society, which in turn justifies the oppressions done to the difference, where difference is marginalized into “otherness”.

Margaret Sanger’s Legacy and the Limitations of Reproductive Rights

In Killing the Black Body, Dorothy Roberts delves into the birth control movement and its criticism the ideology of racism through the eugenics of Margaret Sanger’s legacy. Sanger advocates for reproductive rights, where women should have the agency to control their bodies which involves the bodily agency to give birth or not. It is the ability to control one’s body that symbolizes the woman’s emancipation and the female’s sexuality not as an object but subject. However, the very concept of woman, the political actor she invoked, is not a catchall one, only constituting middle-class, white woman as the true subject who have the “right” for liberation, ignoring the intersectionality and the lived experiences could have under the seemingly stable category of woman. The mode of reproductive right, which is celebrated in the birth control movement, is an assimilation approach that only superficially integrates into the legal with qualification as mentioned above, which does not interrogate with the oppressive assumptions that have been made in sexuality and other discursive categories. Furthermore, the historical context of WWII makes the birth control movement more prominent and urgent since the limited resources at the time where available. The historical context provides further repertoire of reasons in terms of fiscal security and ethnic makeup to back up birth control movement. That is to say to achieve the legalization of birth control, Margaret Sanger alienates women who are racial minority and stay align with the eugenic ideology in order to seek for the right for the woman that she thinks who should be qualified for their own agency. Thus, birth control becomes normalized by transforming difference into otherness, with otherness constructed as a scapegoat and relegated to a socially inferior status.

Dorothy Roberts’ Critique of the Birth Control Movement

Further, Dorothy Roberts argues that the history of birth control complicates its framing as a purely feminist achievement because its development and implementation were deeply entangled with racial, class-based, and eugenic ideologies. While the birth control movement is often celebrated for advancing women’s autonomy and reproductive freedom, Roberts reveals how this autonomy was unevenly distributed: the action is seeking autonomy under the racialized medical system without questioning the validity of the assumption presented. It predominantly benefited white, middle-class women while being weaponized to control and oppress marginalized communities, particularly Black women and the poor. Central to this critique is the concept of medicalization, which refers to the process of framing natural human variations or behaviors as medical problems requiring intervention: the involuntary negative eugenics movement. This process, often presented as objective and scientific, the very approach to “truth”, is in reality shaped by social and ideological forces, including racialized assumptions.

The Paradox of Birth Control

In the context of birth control, medicalization intersected with eugenics, a movement that sought to “improve” society by controlling who could reproduce. Through this lens, certain populations were deemed biologically “inferior” and targeted for sterilization or limited reproductive access. Birth control, instead of being a neutral medical tool, became a mechanism to uphold white supremacy by intervening in the reproductive lives of marginalized communities under the guise of scientific authority and biological determinism. This racialized history highlights the paradox of birth control: while it expanded freedom for some, it did so at the expense of others. The legacy of these injustices continues to shape contemporary feminist debates, particularly in the tension between reproductive rights and reproductive justice. Traditional reproductive rights frameworks often focus on individual choice, assuming a homogenized experience of womanhood. In contrast, the reproductive justice movement emphasizes the importance of intersectionality, recognizing how systemic oppression and lived experiences create varying barriers to reproductive autonomy. By addressing these disparities, reproductive justice seeks to move beyond the limited scope of rights to achieve broader equity and inclusion in reproductive health.

Reproductive Rights vs. Reproductive Justice

According to Loretta Ross, reproductive rights (RR) focus primarily on the legal aspects of accessing birth-related healthcare, emphasizing the right to give birth without considering broader social contexts. In contrast, reproductive justice (RJ) integrates both reproductive rights and social justice, offering a more comprehensive framework. This approach considers how intersecting factors—such as race, socioeconomic status, and personal circumstances—affect individuals’ reproductive choices, supporting an environment where people can make informed, autonomous decisions beyond just the act of reproduction itself. In the RR framework, people would just claim that women should have the right to take control over their own bodies (having access to birth control), while in RJ framework, we would delve into a more complex contextual analysis of their agency in giving birth or not (whether culturally, socially, or economically), which is acknowledging the differences and difficulties we might face in securing the process of birth control.

Toward True Emancipation: The Goals of Reproductive Justice

To achieve the goals of reproductive justice today, drawing on the critiques of Dorothy Roberts and Loretta Ross, it is essential to contextualize individual experiences and the embodied self as shaped and transformed within relational networks. Acknowledging differences and embracing the framework of intersectionality is key to addressing systemic inequities and advancing true emancipation: denaturalization of the discursive assumptions that become the dominant one as knowledge.