Global Reproductive Justice: A New Agenda for Feminist Economics?

This special issue focuses on reproductive justice (RJ) as a framework for feminist research and activism. The introduction provides an overview of when and why the RJ framework was developed, outlines the ways it challenged and extended the way reproductive rights were understood and approached by feminist scholars and activists, and articulaties its productive potential. RJ’s relevance for identifying and responding to the breadth of rights violations taking place across the globe today can only be grasped with a firm understanding of its scope and foundational concepts, such as intersectionality. Its expanded scope, conceptual complexity, and epistemological orientation make RJ incompatible with the neoclassical rational-choice paradigm, but points of resonance with other frameworks provide possibilities for its integration and contribution both to knowledge and to the development of a feminist methodology in economics. The contributions to this special issue represent some of the first efforts to take forward this important project. HIGHLIGHTSReproductive justice (RJ) framework challenges framings of reproductive rights centered on non-interference and the right to choose.Attention must be paid to what the choice frame leaves out and what RJ highlights.The RJ framework can aid in development of a feminist methodology in economics.