Intersection of medicalization and reproductive autonomy: Challenging the barriers faced by women with disabilities
Keywords:
Intersectionality, Medicalization, Pathologization, Reproductive Autonomy, Reproductive JusticeAbstract
This paper explores the medicalization of disability and its detrimental effects on the reproductive autonomy of women with disabilities. Medicalization frames disability as a medical condition that requires intervention, often leading to the assumption that disabled individuals are incapable of making informed reproductive decisions. Drawing on case studies of women with disabilities, including those with muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, and psychiatric conditions, the paper highlights how medicalized views result in coercive reproductive practices such as forced sterilization, limited access to assisted reproductive technologies (ART), and the pathologization of pregnancy. These practices are rooted in harmful stereotypes about disabled women’s ability to parent and a lack of understanding within healthcare systems. By analyzing these issues, the paper critiques how medicalization reinforces discriminatory attitudes and institutional barriers, restricting disabled women’s Reproductive rights. It calls for a shift toward a rights-based, inclusive approach to reproductive healthcare that upholds the autonomy of women with disabilities, advocating for policy reforms to ensure informed consent, equitable access to reproductive services, and the dismantling of medicalized frameworks that undermine disabled women’s reproductive agency.
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