When we talk about reproductive rights in economics, the conversation often centers on “choice”—the right to access contraception or abortion. But what if this focus on individual choice is too narrow, masking the deeper structural forces that determine our reproductive lives?

This is the powerful argument made by the Reproductive Justice (RJ) framework. Created in 1994 by Black women in the United States, RJ bridges the gap between reproductive rights and social justice movements. It moves beyond an individualistic perspective to analyze how systemic, intersectional oppressions—like racism, classism, and colonialism—shape our ability to have children, not have children, and parent children in safe and healthy environments.

While RJ has been influential in fields like law, sociology, and public health, it remains largely absent from economic scholarship. This is a significant missed opportunity. My research argues that we should formally establish Reproductive Justice as a Lakatosian research program within economics. This means giving it a clear structure with a core hypothesis and tools for analysis, much like other established economic theories.

At its heart, the RJ research program is built on one core hypothesis: people’s abilities to make meaningful reproductive decisions are severely restricted by systematic and intersectional oppressions.

This core is supported by auxiliary hypotheses concerning:

1. How capitalist development often produces colonization and polarization.
2. The principle that sexual and reproductive autonomy are fundamental human rights.
3. The understanding that race and gender are social constructs used to create hierarchy.
4. The necessity of dialogue between grassroots movements and academic research to create social change.

Building Blocks from Within Economics

Fortunately, economics doesn’t need to start from scratch to integrate this framework. RJ can be advanced through a powerful synthesis of three existing schools of thought:

1. Development Economics: Theories that analyze the polarizing tendencies of global capitalism and imperialism help us understand why resources and power are distributed so unevenly, directly impacting reproductive outcomes.
2. Feminist Economics: This field provides essential tools like intersectionality and concepts of voice and agency, moving beyond simplistic models of individual choice to examine power structures and collective action.
3. Stratification Economics: This school studies how group-based hierarchies (like white supremacy) are intentionally created and maintained, offering a historical method to understand enduring disparities in wealth and health.

A Historical Example: Birth Control in the 1970s

Consider the US government’s funding of birth control campaigns in the 1960s and 70s. From a traditional economic perspective, this increased “choice.” But an RJ analysis reveals a more complex picture.

Informed by neo-Malthusian and Eugenics theories, these policies led to a massive increase in the sterilization of poor women of color, particularly Native American women. This created a painful tension within Black liberation movements, where women were caught between a genuine need for birth control and a state-sponsored project of population control.

An RJ lens, built on development, feminist, and stratification economics, allows us to understand this episode not as a simple expansion of choice, but as a moment where capitalist priorities, white supremacy, and patriarchal dynamics within social movements collided. It shows how policies that seem neutral can perpetuate severe injustice when they ignore historical context and community voice.

A Fruitful Path Forward

Adopting Reproductive Justice as a research program can help economists overcome critical limitations. It pushes the discipline to move beyond its overreliance on WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) samples, detect analytical blind spots in policy design, prevent “policy gaps” (where government actions undermine their own stated goals), and bridge the crucial gap between academic research, social movements, and policymakers.

By centering the lived experiences of the most marginalized, the Reproductive Justice framework doesn’t just add a new topic to economics—it offers a more rigorous, holistic, and ultimately more useful way to understand how our economies truly shape our lives.

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