Reproductive vulnerabilities: A critical perspective

In this introduction to the Special Issue, we reflect on why a critical approach to the concept of vulnerability is particularly important for reproduction. We explain how each article in the special issue draws out key insights from critical theories of vulnerability, including: (1) The importance of conceptualising vulnerability as created by social structures rather than as inhering, biologically or otherwise, in ‘the vulnerable population’; (2) How the violent application of reproductive norms, within and beyond the state, creates vulnerability; and (3) Reflections on how vulnerability is defined in the realm of reproduction, who shapes the category of vulnerable’, and what consequences this may have.