Medicalizing Reproduction: The Political and Social Regulation of the Female Body

This thesis explores the medicalization of reproduction and how that process has resulted in reproductive injustice towards women of color. Medicalization is the process of how nonmedical problems become defined and treated as medical issues. Medicalization has become an institutionalized system that socially and politically controls the female body. The realm of reproduction has become a political experience for women, as institutions and laws attempt to manage female autonomy and determine who has the right to reproduce and who does not. Medicalization has become a system that is innately racist, sexist, and classist, not only establishing social order but as well as a cultural authority. For women of color, the medicalization of reproduction has allowed for injustice to occur as reproduction has become a political tool to dominate women and control populations. This thesis is going to discuss the historical context of women of color in the medical realm, from enslaved women's experimentation for the development of American gynecology to the Eugenics movement that forcibly sterilized thousands of women, primarily women of color and poor women. A discussion on physician racism and its effect on women of color access to care is going to be analyzed, as well as the infertility industry and its racist and classist structures. However, it will transition to review how the experiences of women of color have resulted in activism and how they are organizing for reproductive justice.