Why Reproductive Justice Needs Queer Analysis

Professor Carly Thomsen of Rice University, author of Reproductive Justice, Queerly, joins Kathryn Rubino to explain why reproductive justice scholarship and queer theory have historically talked past each other, what that gap misses, and why culture work, not just law and policy, is essential to building reproductive and queer justice in a post-Dobbs world.

Key Takeaways

• Reproductive justice, a framework developed by Black feminists in the 1990s, is broader than abortion rights: access matters as much as legality, and reproductive justice also covers parenting, housing, and economic security.

• Thomsen argues that culture work, art, public humanities, media, everyday conversation, is essential alongside law and policy, since many people don't feel they have real access to lawmakers or courts.

• Queer theorists use "queer" to describe a relationship to normativity, not as a synonym for LGBTQ+ identity: someone can be LGBTQ+ without being queer, and someone heterosexual can live queerly.

• In her research on surrogacy campaigns, Thomsen found that centering gay men's family-building stories often sidelined both surrogates themselves and longstanding feminist critiques of the surrogacy industry.

• Thomsen sees sports culture as a real, if imperfect, site of cultural change, and pushes back on the recent politicization of trans athletes as a stand-in for "fairness" debates that ignore how unequal sports already are.

Links and Resources

• Carly Thomsen: http://carlythomsen.com/

• Q&A with Carly Thomsen (UC Press): https://www.ucpress.edu/blog-posts/q-a-with-carly-thomsen-author-of-reproductive-justice-queerly

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carly-thomsen-616632124/

• Contact: thomsen.carly@gmail.com

Keywords

Carly Thomsen, Reproductive Justice Queerly, reproductive justice, queer theory, Rice University, gender studies, feminist scholarship, Dobbs decision, abortion access, surrogacy, LGBTQ, culture work, academia careers, Above the Law, The Jabot Podcast, reproductive rights, women gender sexuality studies, feminist legal scholarship, post-Dobbs, sports and gender

Episode Highlights

• [00:09:00 - 00:11:00]  Carly Thomsen describes the moment a college gender studies class and a Monday Night Football watch party converged into a lasting realization about structural sexism.

• [00:20:00 - 00:21:00]  Thomsen explains why reproductive justice requires more than legal rights, and how access shapes whether a right means anything.

• [00:22:00 - 00:24:00]  Thomsen describes building a $100,000 reproductive justice mini golf installation to make the issue's reach visible.

• [00:31:00 - 00:34:00]  How surrogacy advocacy campaigns centered gay men's stories while leaving out surrogates and feminist critique.