In response to the repeal of Roe v. Wade, ASLE: Association for the Study of Literature and Environment affirms its support of reproductive and sexual rights, health rights and justice, marriage equality, and freedom of gender and sexual identity. ASLE condemns all movements that suppress reproductive freedom for political ends. We call attention to the risk that the Supreme Court will use this same logic to overthrow the rights to contraception, marriage equality, and freedom of gender expression. This logic reflects the way wrongheaded ideas of “nature” have been deployed to uphold systems of social domination. We cannot allow the discourse of nature and the natural to continue to be used to legitimize a racist, colonial, and patriarchal social order. ASLE fully supports reproductive justice and access to healthcare for all women and people with uteruses.

We also recognize that structures of racism and racist violence have disproportionately limited the reproductive freedoms of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous women. We condemn the continued attacks on reproductive rights and advocate for those whose voices are often silenced or dismissed. We call upon our members and allies in other disciplines to engage these issues in the classroom, social media, and the public humanities. Environmental humanists must resist the rise of biopolitical fascism in all its forms. We know many ASLE members find themselves now in states with repressive laws and policies — we recognize the extreme position they find themselves in and applaud the work being done to make their states safe for all women seeking abortion.

Links and Resources:

• Stories matter: https://www.together.plannedparenthood.org/articles/6-share-abortion-story
• National Network of Abortion Funds: https://abortionfunds.org/about/
• Deidre Cooper Owens, Medical Bondage
• Alexandra Minna Stern, Eugenic Nation
• Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body
• Imani Gandi, “How False Narratives of Margaret Sanger are Being Used to Shame Black Women”

• Mississippi Appendectomies: Reliving Our Pro-Eugenics Past by Jessica Pearce
• Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice by Zakiya Luna
• University of Michigan Exhibit, “Birthing Reproductive Justice: 150 years of images and ideas”