Motherhood has never existed outside politics.
It has always been watched, judged, controlled—from the birthing room to the courthouse, from the adoption agency to the immigration checkpoint.
Across the globe, Black, Indigenous, queer, disabled, migrant, and low-income mothers have faced systems that punish them for mothering "wrong," for mothering "too much," or for daring to mother at all.
Forced birth is not new. Criminalized pregnancy is not new. Family separation is not new. They are the old tools of control, repackaged and redeployed.
When states ban abortion and restrict birth control, when courts deny parental rights based on gender identity, when social workers surveil Black families but not white ones—they are not protecting life.
They are policing possibility.
Motherhood becomes a battlefield—a site where autonomy is negotiated, denied, or defended every single day.
And yet, in the face of these barriers, we build. We mother against erasure. We mother against criminalization. We mother futures that are freer, braver, and bigger than the boxes they hand us.
The fight for reproductive justice, for family justice, for the right to mother—or not—is the fight for the future itself.
Motherhood is contested ground. And we will not yield it.
