Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric Sep 2020 Open Access

Rhetorics of Motherhood, Agency, and Reproductive Injustice in Healthcare Providers’ Narratives

Brianna R. Cusanno ; Niv Ketheeswaran

Abstract

Discriminatory policy structures related to segregation, criminalization, environmental regulation, and loan financing intersect to create severe racial inequities in reproductive health. These structures, and their material consequences for human lives, are constituted and perpetuated through discourse. Dominant narratives (DNs) provide stories that naturalize inequalities and are repeated until they become “common sense” by cultural members. The Reproductive Justice Movement (RJM) was founded by women of color activists and scholars to change oppressive structures and to promote the reproductive and human rights of all people. RJM activists have used personal stories as a resistive tool, recognizing that resistive stories can destabilize the taken-for-granted nature of DNs and the violent structures they uphold. In this article, we perform a Critical Narrative Analysis of three personal stories shared by reproductive healthcare providers to understand how their stories can perpetuate and/or resist oppressive DNs through their construction of marginalized patients as characters. We found that, in constructing narratives of patients, participants relied on three main DNs: Western Modernity, White Supremacy, and Neoliberalism. Drawing on these DNs, providers characterize patients as: Good or Bad (M)others, Victims, and Adversaries. Our goal is to show that narratives created with providers are political texts that constitute understandings of patients’ reproductive lives. We conclude with a re-telling of one narrative to emphasize the goals of reproductive justice and highlight the importance of re-framing the inequitable present in order to imagine equitable futures.

Journal
Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric
Published
2020-09-01
DOI
10.59236/rjv20i2pp219-244
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Topics
discourse analysis race and writing
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