Bodies, Families, and the Carceral State: Reproductive Injustice and Abolitionist Resistance

Reproductive justice centers the ability to make decisions about one’s body and to raise families in conditions of dignity, safety, and material support. Within U.S. carceral systems, these conditions are routinely undermined through gendered violence, family separation, and restricted access to health care, with disproportionate impact on women and people assigned female at birth. This interpretive phenomenological qualitative study draws on in-depth interviews with 10 formerly incarcerated participants to examine how reproductive autonomy and reproductive harm are experienced and understood across arrest, confinement, and reentry. Participants described how incarceration, child welfare involvement, policing, and institutional health care constrained reproductive decision making across the life course. Four themes captured shared patterns of meaning across the interviews: gendered violence as state violence, carceral control of parenting, reproductive resistance, and demands for structural change. Findings indicate that reproductive injustice operates as a structural feature of carceral governance rather than an incidental consequence. Framed through reproductive justice in conversation with abolitionist feminist scholarship, the study highlights participant-generated visions for care-based, community-rooted alternatives. Implications emphasize the need for social work, policy, and advocacy approaches that reject punishment as a pathway to care and invest in autonomy, dignity, and collective support.