How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics

by Laura Biggs · 298 pages · ~5.5 hrs

Recommended on

We’re on the Precipice of a Post-Roe World

with Leslie Reagan

9/21/2021

2 books

Laura Briggs's How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics argues that reproduction has become the terrain on which virtually every political battle is fought. Briggs, a professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts, traces how debates about welfare, immigration, healthcare, and labor have been structured by assumptions about reproduction, family, and who deserves to have children. She examines figures like the 'welfare queen,' whose reproductive behavior was used to justify cutting social programs, and the 'anchor baby,' whose existence was used to inflame anti-immigrant sentiment. Briggs shows how these representations, often racialized and gendered, have shaped policy in ways that harm actual families. She argues that understanding politics as reproductive politics reveals connections between seemingly unrelated issues, from prison reform to tax policy. The book draws on historical and contemporary examples, showing continuity in how reproductive ideology has been deployed. Briggs writes accessibly for general readers while engaging scholarly debates about feminism, race, and political economy. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how family and reproduction became such charged political terrain and how reproductive rights connect to broader struggles for justice.

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