Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

6-2026

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Program

Women's and Gender Studies

Advisor

Red Washburn

Subject Categories

Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Keywords

Roe v. Wade, reproductive justice, bodily autonomy, Black feminism, intersectionality

Abstract

This thesis analyzes how the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade shaped public understandings of reproductive rights and how those understandings diverged across race, gender, class, and sexuality. Using a qualitative, interdisciplinary design, the study pairs close textual analysis of Nikki Giovanni’s and Audre Lorde’s poems and essays with socio-legal and historical context on constitutional privacy doctrine, the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments, and the Reconstruction legacy of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The central research question is: what kinds of reproductive “freedom” become legible through Roe’s rights-based framing, and what forms of constraint remain visible when Black feminist analysis is used as the interpretive lens? Drawing on intersectionality and reproductive justice, the thesis argues that Roe’s emphasis on individual privacy can obscure structural determinants of reproductive autonomy, including unequal access to health care, economic insecurity, and racialized state regulation of Black women’s bodies. Giovanni’s representations of Black womanhood, family, and survival are analyzed alongside Lorde’s critique of single-issue politics and her insistence that silence offers no protection. The project contributes to women’s and gender studies by proving how cultural texts function as social evidence, clarifying the limits of formal legal rights and the need for policy and movement frameworks that address inequality at multiple levels.

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