Laura Briggs

Feminist critic Laura Briggs argues that all politics in the U.S. are effectively reproductive politics. She outlines how politicians’ racist accounts of reproduction — stories of Black “welfare queens” and Latina “breeding machines" — encouraged the government and business disinvestment in families. With decreasing wages, the rise in temporary work and no resources for family care, US households have grown increasingly precarious over the past forty years in race-and class-stratified ways. This crisis, Briggs argues, fuels all others, such as immigration, gay marriage, anti-feminism, the rise of the Tea Party, and the election of Trump.

These two volumes form the book series Solinger, Rickie, Khiara M. Bridges, Zakiya Luna and Ruby Tapia (eds.) Reproductive Justice: A New Vision For The Twenty First Century, Oakland, CA: University of California Press,