Reproductive and Sexual Autonomy in Hillary Jordan’s When She Woke

This paper uses the content analysis method and theory of reproductive politics to explore how state-sponsored reproductive policy criminalizes reproductive rights and erodes sexual autonomy in Hillary Jordan’s 2011 dystopian novel When She Woke. The novel depicts a future world in which abortion is criminalized and a genetic technology called “melachroming” is used by the federal government to violate the human rights of the main character, Hannah Payne. The fundamentalist interpretations of religion, coupled with political agenda and public policy, equate abortion with genocide, thus criminalizing the act and punishing women with a genetic alternation of skin color. These actions violate the rehabilitation rights of the convicted, denounce civil rights, and force the sentenced to the life of a social outcast. In the face of an unprecedented economic and reproductive crisis termed “The Great Scourge” in a near techno-future US, the state overturns the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which oppresses women like Hannah. Hannah faces retribution for her abortion in many ways: the genetic alteration of her skin color to be red, the live streaming of her captivity, the so-called Enlightenment Center’s recreation of her abortion scene in the style of horror to serve as propaganda, the continuing menace of the Fist of Christ vigilante group, and the violation of privacy/security (in the name of public safety) through implantation of nano-transmitters in her body to monitor her movements. Jordan’s depiction of the all-encompassing dehumanization of Hannah illustrates that women’s bodies are political. The criminalization of abortion is a form of political performativity that interprets women’s bodies as political anatomies. This study connects the novel’s dystopia to current feminist scholarship and activism about political systems of surveillance, control, and imprisonment that enact state power upon the bodies of women. These patriarchal systems colonize women’s bodies and wield immense power to reduce them to objects of sexual and political control.