Presenter: Sarah Elizabeth Ryan

Faculty Sponsor: Martha Yoder

School: UMass Amherst

Research Area: Law and Legal Studies

Session: Poster Session 1, 10:30 AM - 11:15 AM, Concourse, B8

ABSTRACT

This thesis project examines the continuity of constitutional logic that governs reproductive rights in the United States. This logic has persisted since the early 20th century eugenics movement, specifically in the case of Buck v Bell (1927) to contemporary abortion rhetoric and jurisprudence. This thesis argues that a communitarian constitutional logic is one that elevates “public welfare” over individual reproductive autonomy, which I propose should also be considered “eugenic logic.” While eugenics as a pseudoscientific movement has been condemned by society and legal systems, the constitutional reasoning that justified state intervention over reproduction endures in contemporary laws that prioritize fetal life and collective social interests over women's bodily autonomy. Throughout three chapters, I will analyze how eugenic logic transformed as a means to justify sterilization of women speculated to produce undesirable offspring into a framework that rationalizes policing marginalized pregnant women for drug abuse. I connect these two circumstances of state control over reproduction by arguing that both the collective interest in preventing unwanted offspring, and protecting potential fetal life from harm, follows communitarian constitutional logic. I will place this argument in contemporary terms as well, explaining how the Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) decision was a defining accelerant that reproductive choices are treated as a public interest rather than a matter of individual autonomy. Ultimately, the thesis argues that when the law elevates public welfare or fetal personhood interests above individual reproductive autonomy, the structural logic of eugenics is reproduced, even absent its overt racialized or class based rhetoric.