Reproductive Justice and Migrant Women in Great Britain

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Notes

¹It should be noted that the near-unanimous feminist support for reproductive choice in GB and the US is relatively recent, and that in the past, abortion was a contentious issue amongst feminists.

²I use the term ‘migrant’ to refer to any person residing, whether permanently or temporarily, in a country other than that of their birth. I do not consider a person born in the UK who is also currently residing in the UK to be a migrant, regardless of the country of origin of their parents.

³I use the term ‘uncertain status’ to refer to the situation of people living in the UK without a valid visa or other legal permission, and/or acting in contravention of the terms of their visa, for example, people on student visas working more than the permitted 20 hours a week.

⁴The term preferred by the women in question; c.f Moraga and Anzaldùa 1981; Ross 2006.

⁵The 1992 Supreme Court decision in Planned Parenthood v Casey affirmed the legality of abortion, while permitting individual states to place restrictions around access. Consequently, several states do not permit abortion after a certain point in the pregnancy; require a 24-hour ‘cooling off’ period after a woman initially contacts an abortionist, so she can be ‘certain’; require that the woman view an ultrasound of the foetus before having an abortion; require parental consent for girls under the age of 18 seeking an abortion; and other, similar, restrictions (Solinger 1998; Gerber Fried 1998).

⁶The United States government-funded healthcare plan for people with very low incomes.

⁷Such as Norplant and Depo-Provera.

⁸In Northern Ireland, Abortion remains illegal, unless there is a severe threat to the women's health. Thus, in Great Britain, a woman merely has to demonstrate that the threat to her health would be greater if she continued with the pregnancy instead of having an abortion, while in Northern Ireland a woman has to demonstrate that the threat to her health from pregnancy is objectively severe (Abortion Rights, n.d.a). The situation in Northern Ireland is beyond the purview of this paper, as it is complicated by the ongoing sectarian strife as well as religious convictions.

⁹The use of the term ‘reproductive justice’ by ‘The F-Word’ can be interpreted as an example of mainstream feminism appropriating concepts invented by marginalised women while ignoring the concerns prompting the emergence of said concepts.

¹⁰An international sexual and reproductive health charity, ‘the UK's leading provider of sexual and reproductive healthcare services’ (Marie Stopes International 2011).

¹¹This is especially useful for women whose own doctors may oppose abortion and have referred them to colleagues instead, lengthening the waiting time.

¹²In discussing the conflation of ‘ethnic minorities’ and ‘immigrant’, it must be recognized that, recently, phenotypically white migrants from Eastern Europe have become the targets of growing xenophobic unease. This suggests that they are becoming racialised, included in the same discursive category in policy and discourse as ethnic minority immigrants, a category that does not include white immigrants from Australasia and North America.

¹³It remains to be seen whether this will be true for the children of Eastern Europeans who have settled in Great Britain. As many of the key markers of difference will have been removed, for example, these children will speak with local accents, I suspect that they will experience, at least, far less day-to-day racism than the children of ethnic minority immigrants.

¹⁴The wearing of the niqab and/or burqa in public has been banned in France and Belgium, and politicians are calling for bans in several other European countries, including Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland (Chrisafis 2011; BBC News 2 August 2011). In the UK, Tory MP Philip Hollobone has announced his intention to propose a private members' bill enacting a ban on the wearing of the niqab or burqa in public, and also refuses to meet with constituents who wear the niqab or burqa (Pidd 2010).

¹⁵Secure Borders, Safe Haven states that one of the key goals of British immigration policy is to ‘ensure that [the UK] has the people it needs to prosper in the world economy’ (Home Office 2002: 11). More recently, even while promising to further limit the number of immigrants coming to the UK, the Conservative- Liberal Democratic government has taken pains to assure businesses that their intended cap on migration will not prevent the recruitment of highly-skilled international talent (Clark & Treanor 2010). The link between wealth and ‘desirability’ is reinforced in various individual policies. Visa fees, for example are extortionately high; the price of an ‘indefinite leave to remain visa’ is £972 (UKBA 2011). Anyone wishing to visit or settle in the UK must therefore be able to access considerable financial resources, or be willing and able to acquire considerable debt.

¹⁶ The Path to Citizenship, for example, states ‘Migrants are on average net fiscal contributors. But we need to take into account any transitional pressures that migrants place on public services, and ensure that individuals are not able to place undue demands on our benefits and service’ (Home Office 2008: 7). Exorbitant visa fees have been directly linked to the need to recover money from immigrants because of the cost they supposedly impose on UK society; for example, in March 2009, then Communities' Secretary Hazel Blears used this cost to justify increasing visa fees by £50 (BBC News 19 March 2009).