Fulfilling the Promise of Reproductive Justice

This article was written by Erin Miles Cloud and Lisa Sangoi, Co-Founders of Movement for Family Power, and published in Critical Resistance’s The Abolitionist Newspaper.

“We believe the child welfare system, or more appropriately, family policing or the family regulation system (FRS), erodes reproductive freedom in the literal sense: its primary purpose is the surveillance, control, punishment, and destruction of Black caretakers and families. It also erodes reproductive freedom in the political sense when it engages in community surveillance, family separation, and family destruction. It does this for the same reason that the criminal legal system engages in policing, imprisonment, and the death penalty: to blame and punish those who suffer the most from structural harms for those harms. It fails to nurture freedom, but rather reproduces the harms of racial capitalism and neoliberalism.”