{"id":165155,"date":"2026-10-16T09:53:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T17:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/10\/16\/why-reproductive-justice-needs-queer-analysis\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T09:53:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T17:53:20","slug":"why-reproductive-justice-needs-queer-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/10\/16\/why-reproductive-justice-needs-queer-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Reproductive Justice Needs Queer Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professor Carly Thomsen of Rice University, author of Reproductive Justice, Queerly<\/a>, joins me to explain why reproductive justice scholarship and queer theory have historically talked past each other, what that gap misses, and why culture work, not just law and policy, is essential to building reproductive and queer justice in a post-Dobbs<\/em> world.<\/p>\n

Key Takeaways<\/strong>
* Reproductive justice, a framework developed by Black feminists in the 1990s, is broader than abortion rights: access matters as much as legality, and reproductive justice also covers parenting, housing, and economic security.<\/p>\n

* Thomsen argues that culture work, art, public humanities, media, everyday conversation, is essential alongside law and policy, since many people don\u2019t feel they have real access to lawmakers or courts.<\/p>\n

* Queer theorists use \u201cqueer\u201d to describe a relationship to normativity, not as a synonym for LGBTQ+ identity: someone can be LGBTQ+ without being queer, and someone heterosexual can live queerly.<\/p>\n

* In her research on surrogacy campaigns, Thomsen found that centering gay men\u2019s family-building stories often sidelined both surrogates themselves and longstanding feminist critiques of the surrogacy industry.<\/p>\n

* Thomsen sees sports culture as a real, if imperfect, site of cultural change, and pushes back on the recent politicization of trans athletes as a stand-in for \u201cfairness\u201d debates that ignore how unequal sports already are.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Why Reproductive Justice Needs Queer Analysis<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

Professor Carly Thomsen of Rice University, author of Reproductive Justice, Queerly<\/a>, joins me to explain why reproductive justice scholarship and queer theory have historically talked past each other, what that gap misses, and why culture work, not just law and policy, is essential to building reproductive and queer justice in a post-Dobbs<\/em> world.<\/p>\n

Key Takeaways<\/strong>
* Reproductive justice, a framework developed by Black feminists in the 1990s, is broader than abortion rights: access matters as much as legality, and reproductive justice also covers parenting, housing, and economic security.<\/p>\n

* Thomsen argues that culture work, art, public humanities, media, everyday conversation, is essential alongside law and policy, since many people don\u2019t feel they have real access to lawmakers or courts.<\/p>\n

* Queer theorists use \u201cqueer\u201d to describe a relationship to normativity, not as a synonym for LGBTQ+ identity: someone can be LGBTQ+ without being queer, and someone heterosexual can live queerly.<\/p>\n

* In her research on surrogacy campaigns, Thomsen found that centering gay men\u2019s family-building stories often sidelined both surrogates themselves and longstanding feminist critiques of the surrogacy industry.<\/p>\n

* Thomsen sees sports culture as a real, if imperfect, site of cultural change, and pushes back on the recent politicization of trans athletes as a stand-in for \u201cfairness\u201d debates that ignore how unequal sports already are.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Carly Thomsen of Rice University, author of Reproductive Justice, Queerly, joins me to explain why reproductive justice scholarship and queer theory have historically talked past each other, what that gap misses, and why culture work, not just law and policy, is essential to building reproductive and queer justice in a post-Dobbs world. Key Takeaways* […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":165134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}