Work

Mens Pregnancies and Nonbinary Pregnancies in The Law: Ontic Injustice and/or Invisibilization

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: The law surrounding pregnancy – regulating who can become pregnant with assisted procreation, who can end a pregnancy, and determining the legal consequences of a pregnancy for parental status – fails men and nonbinary people who can and do become pregnant. The law genders the pregnant person’s body at multiple sites of intervention – in determining who can access fertility treatment, in determining who can access abortion, and in determining the legal consequences of birth-giving. At each site of intervention, the law can and does cause substantive harms to individuals, ranging from limiting men and nonbinary people who can become pregnant’s access to procreative services to psychological harms undermining an individual’s sense of self-worth and of self-expression. I argue that the law, in constructing the pregnant person as female, subjects pregnant men and nonbinary people to a serious ontic injustice (Jenkins 2023) and associated moral injury. In other instances, where the law is silent on the matter of men’s pregnancies and nonbinary people’s pregnancies, it subjects individuals to invisibilization (Krajewska and Cahill-O-Callaghan 2020) resulting in both uncertainty and erasure.

Source: Alternatives Global Local Political

DOI: 10.1177/03043754251333871

Author: Elizabeth Chloe Romanis

Institution: Durham University

Language: English

Topic: Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Subfield: Gender Studies

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Peace, justice, and strong institutions, Reduced inequalities, Gender equality

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,650