5 Reproductive Injustice in Palestine — A Product of Coloniality
5 Reproductive Injustice in Palestine — A Product of Coloniality
Sydney McGonigal
Introduction
Of the more than 180 women who give birth every day in Gaza as of November 3, 2023, the World Health Organization reports that fifteen percent of them are “likely to experience pregnancy or birth-related complications and need additional medical care” (WHO 2023). Such conditions are clear infringements on reproductive rights and shine a light on the reproductive violations experienced by Palestinians because of Israel’s occupation and genocide of Palestine.
Reproductive justice has been a major topic in the United States in recent history, especially given the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022 with the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that removed the nationwide right to abortion. I, like many, was outraged by this decision, and during and after the decision, I dedicated myself to learning more about reproductive rights and reproductive justice in the United States and, later, around the world. It was through this research that I learned about the racist and classist roots and implications of reproductive healthcare and the impact the lack of reproductive justice has beyond the white, able-bodied, cis-gendered perspective.
The current colonial genocide of Palestinians by Israel draws direct parallels to reproductive injustice under and after colonialism, with the treatment of Palestinian mothers comparable to the way that people of color in the U.S., especially Black and Indigenous people, are disproportionately affected by reproductive injustice. Moreover, with the attack on reproductive healthcare in the U.S. after Roe, it has become obvious that men wish to control and regulate women’s bodies, just as the white patriarchy wishes to control the bodies of people of color. After all, reproductive injustice is fueled by “structural racism and cissexism [which] cannot be separated from the dominant framework of binary gender” (Yam and Fixmer-Oraiz 2023, 363). Thus the connection between the cisheteropatriarchy that enforces abortion bans and racist structures derrived from colonialism become ever more apparent. This divide in who is and who isn’t encouraged to reproduce emphasizes the argument that reproductive injustice unfairly and largely targets minorities and props up the ruling, dominant class of rich white people, much like colonial times did. Moreover, the attack on bodily autonomy brought on by Dobbs has opened the door to more attempts to “criminalize and otherwise demonize trans and queer bodily autonomy across the US” (LeMaster 2023, 351)
In this paper, I explore and analyze what reproductive rights and reproductive justice look like in Palestine, both before and after the events of October 7, 2023. I will examine them in relation to reproductive rights in Israel and other indigenous and marginalized groups, primarily in the United States, to find similarities between the stances and regulations on reproduc