Posts tagged women's rights

LET’S STAND FOR AND CELEBRATE THAT [[WORKER’S RIGHTS]]


IMMIGRANT RIGHTS WOMEN’S RIGHTS POC’S RIGHTS PEOPLE WITH DIFFERENT ABILITIES’  RIGHTS QUEER RIGHTS CHILDREN’S RIGHTS 


ARE HUMAN RIGHTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lynn Paltrow*, 28 Southern University Law Review 201 (2001).

 While many people view the war on abortion and the war on drugs as distinct, there are in fact many connections and overlaps between the two. Their history, the strategies used to control and punish some reproductive choices and those to control the use of certain drugs, the limitations that exist to access to reproductive health care and drug treatment, and the populations most harmed by those limitations are remarkably similar. These similarities are particularly apparent where the issues coalesce in the regulation and punishment of pregnant, drug-using women.

Those who are concerned about fundamental issues of social justice may be losing ground, missing opportunities to build coalitions and strengthen arguments by failing to recognize the similarities among and relationships between the issues.

A comparison of the efforts to control reproduction and some (but significantly, not all) drug use reveals much about those who seek to control both and about their true agendas. If efforts to control reproduction and drugs are rooted in forms of bigotry and prejudice that are essentially the same, neither drug addiction nor pregnancy should be a basis for scapegoating some individuals or for dividing progressive coalitions. If efforts to control both reflect a common political agenda, and are used to draw attention away from real underlying issues-like poverty, race discrimination, and lack of a coherent national health-care policy then those who fight against each must recognize that they have a common cause and develop a more comprehensive strategy that addresses both as fundamental issues of social justice rather than as single, separate and special interest issues. Finally, if some people - African American women - are particularly harmed by these efforts to control reproduction and some drug use,  ^( )  there is both an opportunity and a need to develop interventions that respond effectively and specifically to these harms and to the barriers they face. 

Only by recognizing those shared aspects of measures to control reproduction and drug use can we have the opportunity to develop more effective responses to each. While some of the parallels that are drawn in this examination may be inapt, and more cogent ones might be added by people better versed than this author in drug control policy and the history of reproductive rights, the similarities discussed here are intended to stimulate further exploration and discussion.

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