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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2021

BRITTANY R. LEACH Open the ORCID record for BRITTANY R. LEACH [Opens in a new window]
BRITTANY R. LEACH*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia, United States
*
Brittany R. Leach, Lecturer, Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Virginia, United States, [email protected].
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Abstract

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 policy making 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.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 116 , Issue 1 , February 2022 , pp. 116 - 130
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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