Episode 2: Reproductive Coercion

Hello and welcome back to Insomniac Librarians!

In this episode we’re discussing two articles by our very own Kylie Cheung, a piece in Dame Magazine called “Abortion Bans Are a Form of Gender Violence” as well as one in Rewire called “When Your Partner Tries to Control Your Birth Control.”

Note: We mention at the end of the episode that our next episode will be on Carceral Capitalism by Jackie Wang, but due to some chaos happening in our personal lives we will be postponing covering this book so we can do it justice! Instead, we will be talking about Mari Matsuda’s essay with a special guest. Stay tuned!

Click here for the episode transcript.

Check out our Instagram post concerning this episode.

Some sources and related resources for the stats and subjects covered in the episode:

• The discussion of the reading

  • There are some sources hyperlinked in the articles, so we encourage you to check those out!

• How abortion bans are violent

  • The United States currently has the highest maternal death rate in the industrialized world, with even higher death rates in states with more restrictions on abortion access

  • CDC: Black women are 243 percent more likely than their white counterparts to die from pregnancy or birth-related causes

  • Turnaway Study: Being unable to get abortion care can make someone four times as likely to be pushed into poverty

• How anti-abortion laws, feticide laws and stigma around abortion and miscarriage are weaponized against people who lose their pregnancies or self-manage their abortions with medication

  • Marshae Jones case

  • Purvi Patel case

• Oklahoma lawmaker quote: “I understand that they feel like that is their body,” he said of pregnant women. “I feel like it’s separate—what I call them is, you’re a ‘host.’”