Reproductive in/Justice and Mass Incarceration

Background and Purpose: Women are the fastest-growing segment of the incarcerated population, and along with individuals assigned-female-at-birth (AFAB), they face a variety of barriers to reproductive health care services as they enter, experience, and exit incarceration. This qualitative project seeks to address a gap in knowledge about system-impacted individuals’ experiences as they attempt to exercise their right to access and utilize reproductive healthcare services. The study and analysis are guided by the following research questions: How has incarceration impacted women’s and AFAB individuals’ access to, and utilization of, reproductive health care services? And how do women and AFAB individuals perceive reproductive justice in the context of (mass) incarceration?

Methods: This study includes in-depth qualitative interviews with ten women and AFAB individuals who have been impacted by the criminal legal system. The interviews explore 1) how transitions between the different stages of involvement with the system shape their access to services and continuity of reproductive care and 2) their overall perspectives on reproductive justice in the context of mass incarceration. The interview guides include items about participants’ experiences accessing and utilizing a variety of reproductive healthcare services (e.g., routine healthcare screenings, emergency and standard contraception, and access to abortion services). All completed de-identified interview transcripts are uploaded to NVivo (v.10) for qualitative analysis, including open and focused coding.

Results: This qualitative descriptive analysis, focused on exploring how people understand and describe their lived experiences (Sandelowski, 2009), will use an iterative, multi-stage process including open and focused coding, the development of a codebook, and the identification of themes. The interviews are organized by the different stages of interaction with the legal system (i.e., experiences prior to arrest, during incarceration, and post-release). Findings will highlight the voices of those with direct lived experience and provide insight into their unique and evolving reproductive needs, including the obstacles they face to reproductive justice.

Conclusions and Implications: This study highlights the ways in which incarceration undermines and disrupts the basic tenets of the reproductive justice movement: the right to have children, to not have children, and to parent children with safety and dignity. More specifically, findings demonstrate how the transitional points as people enter and exit incarceration further compound inaccess by presenting unique barriers and disruptions to continuity of care. This is a timely topic, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 further limiting reproductive health choices in carceral settings. This study contributes to the social work field by investigating the ways in which mass incarceration perpetuates a variety of conditions that maintain reproductive injustice in the United States and beyond.