Information, Power, and Reproductive Health

Information, Power, and Reproductive Health will encourage readers to explore the inextricable intersection of reproductive health information and power. Rooted in a framework of reproductive justice, it will explore the ways in which power plays a central role in how reproductive health information is created, controlled, withheld, and shared. Deeply entrenched ideologies about which bodies are deserving or undeserving of reproductive care, which facets of reproductive life are worthy of research, which issues are taboo or frequently dismissed, and how to control bodies considered unruly all affect what health information is easily accessible or perhaps hidden from those who need it. Legislative, bureaucratic, medical-scientific, economic, and familial systems and structures shape reproductive health information, and framing information production and consumption as a social act can help us to trace these structural and ideological forces in the reproductive health landscape and locate transgressive sites of information sharing that speak back to power. Chapters will address the continued and more-urgent-than-ever interest in reproductive health, feminism(s), womanism, critical theory, and praxis in librarianship and information studies. We aim to develop an essential volume for librarians, healthcare practitioners, academics, advocates, and activists involved in the study of or street-level organizing around reproductive health in this critical era of reproductive crisis.