The concept of reproductive justice is currently receiving a lot of attention in counterhegemonic feminisms. The concept emerged in clear opposition to an individualizing understanding of reproductive rights that characterized the U.S. pro-choice movements and also the post-Cairo international antinatalist population programs. Transnationally, feminist movements refer to the concept when challenging structural inequalities related to reproduction and parenthood. For these reasons, the concept of reproductive justice is also a landmark in the critique of Malthusian crisis narratives and demographic governance strategies.

This chapter explores how Black and popular feminism are adopting the concept currently in Brazil. In the first section, the chapter deals with implications for agenda setting and reflects the movements’ strong reference to necropolitical dimensions of reproductive relations. Three elements of agenda setting are explored: addressing structural inequality within ‘classical’ reproductive health issues; the attention to antinatalist strategies, such as a continuous policy of sterilization; and experiences of motherhood/parenthood being stigmatized or attacked. In the second section, the chapter explores another level of meaning of reproductive justice, namely that of being a framework for intersectional feminist alliances. Therefore, it deals with how the movements negotiate different positionalities and the question of allyship within their everyday convivialities. The movements negotiate these organizational challenges by reflecting processes of collective repositioning in a complex way and by referring to important concepts of contemporary antiracist and social movements in Brazil, such as não lugar, aquilombamento, and bem-viver.

Introduction

Reproductive justice, or in Brazilian Portuguese justiça reprodutiva, is a traveling concept that has recently attracted strong attention within those transnational feminist movements currently on an upswing that are engaging in counterhegemonic feminisms. The broad framework for politics around abortion, contraception, pregnancy, birth and childraising aims to analyze and oppose complex and structurally embedded reproductive inequalities and oppressions. It is also conceptualized as an intersectional framework for multivocal alliances.