Abstract
In the years leading up to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, several U.S. states passed laws prohibiting physicians from performing abortions if they believe the decision is based on predicted fetal traits such as race, gender, or disability. Framed by supporters as “anti-eugenics” laws, these measures have divided disability advocates—some see them as affirming the value of disabled lives, while others critique them as coercive and paternalistic constraints on reproductive autonomy. This paper examines these debates through a critical cultural lens, reading the legal discourse alongside the 2020 independent film The Surrogate, which dramatizes a similar ethical dilemma involving prenatal diagnosis. The project brings together humanities and biomedical perspectives to interrogate how ethics—particularly the ethics of disability and reproduction—is constructed and contested across domains of law, medicine, and cultural representation. Legal scholars argue that selective abortion cannot constitute eugenics in the absence of state-sponsored mandates, yet the invocation of eugenics language in these laws signals a deeper cultural ambivalence about biomedicine’s role in shaping reproductive choices. Drawing on interdisciplinary methods from cultural studies and bioethics, the paper explores how moral values are mobilized in both juridical and narrative forms. In doing so, it highlights the need for more critical, cross-disciplinary approaches to the study of reproductive ethics—approaches attentive to how power operates through both law and care, and how disability is positioned in contemporary cultural and biomedical imaginaries.
Presenters
Alexis WalkerAssistant Professor, Medical Humanities and Ethics, Columbia University, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Disability; Reproduction; Biomedicine; Ethics; Cultural Narrative; Eugenics; Film; Interdisciplinarity
