Radical connectedness: Reproductive rights, climate justice and gender equality

As the effects of climate change multiply, it appears that women’s reproductive rights are being instrumentalized in service to new forms of population control to save the planet. This chapter suggests that a just approach to reproductive rights in an era of planetary crisis should draw on the radical connectedness between reproductive and climate justice, within a wider project of social justice. Drawing on an expanded idea of social reproduction to encompass care for self, family, community, environment, and planet; the chapter locates women’s reproductive freedom in the context of a transformative substantive equality that takes account of reproductive and climate justice. This multidimensional, multilayered equality directs attention to the conditions and power relations, at all levels, that enable or constrain women’s substantive ability to choose whether, when, and how to have and raise children in the context of meaningful family, community, environmental, and planetary well-being. It allows a deeper engagement with reproductive rights and social justice.