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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, brl4xd@virginia.edu.
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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.

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Type
Research Article
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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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