User:Sydneybiswal/sandbox

Dorothy Roberts credits her decision to become a lawyer and to go into law teaching about reproductive justice to her assumption “that women should have [an] absolute right to reproductive health services and to make decisions about their reproductive lives” (Source 1). However, it was not specifically the right to abortion that she intended to defend; it was the “brutal regulation of black women who were pregnant and wanted to have children, the denial of their right to bear children, and the control that black women had experienced historically as well as in the present day of their decisions about their reproductive lives and their bodies” (source 1).

Dorothy Roberts’ Views on Reproductive Justice

Sydney: Roberts believes that a women’s ability to make decisions about their childbearing is affected by the social conditions they live under and the discrimination they may face, whether their childbearing is valued or devalued. And that is beyond the decision to have an abortion. It also includes the decision to have a child and the ability to raise your child in a healthy way and to have your relationship with your child respected by the state and by society. So this is way beyond the limited protection of choice against government interference. It takes into account issues of social justice as well in order to guarantee women and men a true ability to make reproductive decisions and be self-determining when it comes to whether or not to have children and their relationships with their children.