Rethinking Abortion Rights After Dobbs: Privacy, Equality, and Reproductive Freedom

This book offers a novel account of the normative foundations of abortion rights informed by political theory and feminist theory. Stanley revisits the debate between privacy and equality as rationales for abortion rights that erupted after Roe v. Wade. First, Stanley argues that we can reconceptualize privacy along feminist lines, contra its feminist critics.  Second, this reconceptualization allows us to see privacy and equality as essential allies and supplements to each other. When operating in tandem, privacy and equality provide a powerful theoretical and practical foundation not only for abortion rights but also for an expansive vision of reproductive justice informed by an intersectional understanding of the reproductive burdens endured by those multiply marginalized by gender, race, and class. This reproductive justice framework is the most promising basis for a powerful post-Dobbs political coalition seeking to restore and greatly expand the promise of reproductive freedom symbolically represented by Roe.

Sharon Stanley is Professor of Political Science at the University of Memphis. She is the author of The French Enlightenment and the Emergence of Modern Cynicism (2012) and An Impossible Dream? Racial Integration in the United States (2017).