Reproductive Justice on the Ballot: Race, Gender, and Subject Formation within California's Parental Notification Initiatives

Abstract

In the last ten years, reproductive justice policy struggles have steadily migrated away from the courts and the streets and onto the ballot, where voters have been asked to decide the fate of topics ranging from same sex marriage and adoption rights, abortion restrictions, embryonic stem cell research, and an array of health, immigration, and welfare issues. This paper considers the impact this transformation has played in shaping the content and trajectory of public discourse over the meaning and valence of such issues. After a brief discussion of the forces which have driven the proliferation of such ballot measures, we examine a series of three "parental notification" initiatives in California between 2004 and 2008, analyzing the ways in which the particular characteristics of direct democracy discourse have forced competing interest groups to narrate their claims and policy warrants. We explain how paradoxically, even though proponents seeking to limit abortion rights failed to pass any of these measures, they succeeded in influencing the contours which will guide future deliberations of these issues. We pay particular attention to the role whiteness plays as an absent referent in shaping this process, as particular normative racial, gender, and sexual subjectivities become valorized and centered in the debate. We conclude with a series of observations about the role that ballot measures will play in future deliberations over reproductive justice.