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Using data from a multi-method study with a national reproductive justice coalition, this chapter examines the emergence of the US reproductive justice movement. I first examine how reproductive justice emerged in relation to the mainstream women's movements. Then I demonstrate how, due to the relationship between reproductive justice and social identity, the boundaries of the reproductive frame and movements are simultaneously broader and more constrained in meaning than reproductive rights. Finally, I show how (perceived) co-optation leads to tensions between movement sectors and weakens the potential for reproductive justice to reinvigorate activism around reproductive issues. I conclude with how the success of the reproductive justice movement, including around diversity and coalition building, can inform other social movements.

This chapter examines symphysiotomy in twentieth-century Ireland as one example of a systematized obstetric violence that has characterized Ireland’s modern history. Expanding scholarly interpretations of state- and Church-inflicted abuse of women in the twentieth century, this analysis establishes the medical profession as a central actor alongside the twentieth-century state-Church coalition that regulated women’s reproductive lives and engaged in systematic repression. This chapter recognizes that Ireland’s history of reproductive abuse and coercion did not just involve contraception or abortion but also labor and birth experiences. In addition, it offers a more complete and complex interpretation of obstetric violence by highlighting the experiences of married women with wanted pregnancies; almost all research to date focuses on the experiences of unmarried pregnant women or unwanted pregnancies. This examination of symphysiotomy and obstetric violence in Ireland illuminates the ways in which religious, national, and medical power has been mapped on women’s reproductive bodies, particularly in the decades after independence in 1922. It also makes essential links between Ireland’s past and present, demonstrating that a careful analysis of the history of obstetric violence and the religious underpinnings of it are essential in understanding Ireland today. With this research, we also place symphysiotomy within the context of the global reproductive justice movement, asking how a reproductive justice framework – one that links reproductive rights with social justice – can help us interpret obstetric violence and address the wounds of Ireland’s past.

Sterilisation in India (and globally) has a contentious and deeply politicised history. Despite this troubling legacy, India continues to rely on female sterilisation as the main form of contraception and family planning. Abortion, which has been legal under broad grounds since 1971, intersects with sterilisation at different points over women's reproductive lifecourse. Drawing on three case studies exploring women's abortion trajectories in Karnataka, India (2017), this chapter examines sterilisation as a reproductive technology (RT) in women's abortion narratives. These include experiences of failed sterilisation necessitating abortion, as well as narratives around pre- and post-abortion counselling with sterilisation conditionalities. Women report healthcare workers shaming or scolding them for not being sterilised after their last pregnancy – demonstrating the prominence of sterilisation as an enforced social norm using ‘health’ frames. Using reproductive justice (RJ) as a lens, I analyse how sterilisation interacts with abortion and the narratives of shame and stigma that surround the two technologies and make visible the ways in which it results in the denial and restriction of women's reproductive freedoms.

This edited collection proposes an interdisciplinary and integrated approach to the study of reproductive technologies (RTs), which reflects the fact that many people use different technologies throughout their lifecourse and resists the disciplinary siloing of research on these technologies. The ever-expanding availability of RTs, the continued roll-out of ‘family planning’ and maternity services across low- and middle-income settings and the rapid development of the fertility industry mean that it is more likely than ever that individuals, especially women and trans* people, will engage with more than one RT at some point in their life. These multiple engagements with RTs will affect users' expectations and uptake, as well as the technologies' availability, commercial success, ethical status and social meanings. We offer this book as part of a wider movement in the study of reproduction and RTs, which takes inspiration from the reproductive justice framework to address forms of exclusion, discrimination and stratification that are perpetuated in the development and application of RTs and the ways in which they are studied and theorised. Here, we introduce the project and outline the structure of the book.

This essay brings structural intimacies – theorised as the meeting of social structural patterns with interpersonal lives – to the border to consider transnational LGBTQ kinships. Specifically, the paper considers ‘the border’ and its state-driven bio-regulations as a reproductive technology that produces LGBTQ, racial/ethnic and social class inequities through the consolidation of heteronormative, bio-genetic kinship institutions and ideations of family. Structural intimacies harnesses intimacy as both subject and as an analytic lens for queering reproductive sociology that insists on re-conceptualizing institutions central to our lives. Structural intimacies move our analytic gaze from how the border structures sexuality, and vice versa, to consider the border as at once a structural and an affective domain. Structural intimacies is a conceptual tool useful for cross-disciplinary inquiry into the social and structural contexts in which reproductive technologies render meaning, as well as produce families, and to illustrate the analytic necessity of storying both content and method as integral to queer/ing scholarship. Straddling the most proximal forms of daily care and labor patterning everyday intimacies with the policies and practices of the state, the concept of structural intimacies reveals moments of encounter between state institutions with the most intimate components of a person's life and identity, in this case amplified by the bio-politics of the border.

The internally displaced persons (IDPs) are often overlooked population, falling between the cracks of international and national commitments. Displaced women and children go through more hardship than the male counterpart, as they are frequently at greater risk and do not get adequate access to the reproductive healthcare rights; they suffer from poor health amid threats of eviction. The purpose of this paper is to look into the IDPs reproductive healthcare situation in India and sustainable development goal (SDG) role in addressing the reproductive healthcare rights of the IDPs in India.

This paper is based on the available literature on reproductive rights of IDPs in India, analysis of the SDGs 3 and other legal safeguards.

The newly arrived IDPs in the camps have complex needs and health problems. They are susceptible to a number of health problems due to the exposure to physical and environmental threats, violence and trauma. Many of them face a loss of social networks and assets, knowledge and information in the new environment, and lack food security. They have inadequate shelter, healthcare services, sanitation and access to safe water.

This is a viewpoint paper and most of the information in this paper are taken from different sources which are cited in the reference section. There is a lack of sufficient data on IDPs in India. Most of the IDPs figures/data are quoted from Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and other literature.

To achieve the SDGs by 2030, India needs to take account of all people’s vulnerabilities to address their humanitarian and sustainable development needs. It is important that the development, humanitarian actors, along with the local communities, work collectively to respond to the health needs of the IDPs. Moreover, the active role of the government can provide the necessary assistance to guarantee the rights of IDPs health, adequate standard of living and to social security.

This paper highlights the reproductive healthcare rights of the IDPs in India and the challenges faced by them. It has analyzed the policy gaps. The paper also suggests few measures that can be undertaken to address those challenges under the SDGs.

This section highlights the varied roles and contexts in which women contribute to both conflict resolution and conflict transformation. Three of the five chapters feature or include indigenous or traditional women's activities. Tursunova and Stobbe conduct primary research in their countries of origin, illustrating the traditional contexts in which women build and sustain social networks that contribute to conflict resolution and empowerment. Their studies not only widen the spectrum of potential conflict resolution settings but also broaden narrow conceptions of women's empowerment, such as gender mainstreaming that focus primarily on women's direct involvement in political systems overlooking traditional community means of decision making. Snyder's research expands peacebuilding models by putting the transnational social networking of refugee women's organizations at the center of her analysis and in the process, challenges the meaning of “local,” traditional conflict resolution by focusing on indigenous peoples in the context of a refugee camp or host country. Snyder, Tursunova, and Chawansky integrate development literature, bridging interdisciplinary fields and highlighting the interest of international development agencies in women's peace activities in the context of protracted conflict. Chawansky, in particular, critiques the ideology, both feminist and post-feminist, of peace and development agencies offering sports activities to girls in conflict arenas. Finally, Snyder, Graybill, Stobbe, and Chawansky include in their analysis the impact of UN mandates (e.g., UNSCRs on women, peace, and security, and the UN Millennium Development Goals) on gendered peacebuilding strategies from the grassroots to the transnational level.

Unassisted childbirth, also known as “freebirth,” is when a person intentionally gives birth at home with no professional birth attendant. The limited research on unassisted birth in the United States focuses on women’s reasons for making this choice. Studies suggest women are committed to birthing without a professional and that this choice is rooted in religious or natural-family belief systems. These studies do not adequately account for the ways a framework of “choice” obscures the role structural barriers play in decision-making processes. International research on unassisted childbirth finds that it is not always a first choice and may be a last resort for women who have had negative experiences with maternity care. More research on unassisted birth in the United States is needed to better understand if people face similar structural barriers. In this paper I examine how structural limitations of the US healthcare system intersect with values in decision-making processes about childbirth. Drawing on in-depth interviews with nine women who gave birth unassisted in the United States, I examine the women’s shared ideological commitments, negative experiences with health care, and barriers faced seeking care. I discovered that unassisted birth may not be a first, or even positive choice, but rather a compromise informed by ideological commitments and constrained choices. Structural barriers in the US healthcare system prevented women from having a professional birth attendant who they felt was acceptable, available, and accessible. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for debates about birth justice and health policy.