WGS 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Surrogacy, Social Cost

• School: SFSU
• Department: Women and Gender Studies
• Course: WGS 200
• Professor: Julietta Hua

Document Summary

Birth control : contraception technologies (range and variety) to regulate reproduction; often and historically target women as users; different impact on different communities, some methods are more invasive than others. Pro-life/pro-choice : particular political movement (1980s); pro-life is against abortion, often tied to ideological position that life begins before birth/at conception; pro-choicewas a political position for abortion as a decision for individual persons. Reproduction justice : preferred term, esp for many activists today; term to ack different histories of access around birth control can be both oppressive and empowering (uneven histories of access, harm, empowerment) Structure and environment of prison is one premised on unequal positions of power; you cannot consent if the environment is coercive. Regulations, rules, laws exist but they don"t matter. Doctor frames the sterilizations against the potential social cost of raising the children (assumes poor children are not worth having, women in prison are presumed to not be worthy of having children; which children are worthwhile.