Liberty, Honor, and Controlling Reproduction: What Honor and Shame Practices Teach Us About Roe v. Wade

Abstract: How can questions about honor and shame practices—so usefully employed by scholars of the Middle East and Mediterranean—shed fresh light on American family planning jurisprudence? The following argues that the privacy rights on which the landmark US Supreme Court decisions Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade were based participated in honor and shame practices because they asserted the rights of the modern state to shield women’s sexuality from public view. Historians of modern Egypt have established how the state can co-opt customary behaviors to act as a patriarchal protector and preserve a gendered social order. By comparing changes in the United States to those in Egypt, this article identifies a broader analytical framework for interpreting mid-twentieth-century claims regarding women’s rights and establishes how the state can also claim rights in the name of progress—a different view of justice than securing individual liberties.