S3, E3 Looting the Womb: Black Birthing People and Reproductive Unfreedom

Zora's Daughters

We're getting down with Marxy Marx and the Foucky Bunch! In this episode, Alyssa and Brendane discuss reproductive justice, dispossession, and the stakes for Black birthing people in a post-Roe v. Wade world with Dr. Mali Collins (IG | Twitter).

What's the Word? Dispossession. We draw a thread through Karl Marx's primitive accumulation, Rosa Luxemburg's The Accumulation of Capital, and David Harvey's accumulation by dispossession to thinking about the ways Black birthing people have been dispossessed of reproductive rights and motherhood.

What We're Reading. "The Meaning of Liberty" in Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts. In this chapter Roberts argues that we must reshape (or perhaps exceed) our understanding of reproductive liberty by accounting for the experiences and needs of Black women.

What in the World?! We are joined by Assistant Professor Mali Collins to discuss who expansive definition of reproductive labour, the spectacle of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the whiteness of the abortion access movement, what we can do to survive this moment in community, reconnecting with your body, and black maternal dispossession.

Sister Song Reproductive Justice Collective | The People's Paper Co-op | GoFundMe for Murdered Black Mother of 6 | Help a Pregnant Black Mother Rest

Other Episodes

S1, E6 Deathcraft Country
S1, E 14 Afropessimism: Anything But Black!

Discussed In This Episode:

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Dorothy Roberts, 1997)
How Your Period-Tracking App Could End Up Tracking You (Mali Collins, 2021)

Syllabus for ZD 301 is available here!

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Transcript will be available on our website here.