Anomaly seeks previously-unpublished work in all genres for a new feature folio through 7/31/19.
We are entrenched in a global culture of power inequities. Reproductive power, the ability to create new human life, threatens upper-class cisheteropatriarchal control and has been highly regulated for centuries.
Regulations of one’s autonomy of body, health, and reproduction vary greatly — from the current US administration’s attacks on abortion access, to the forced sterilization of Puerto Ricans and of Black and Native people in the US, replicated in countries across nearly every continent — from Germany, to Bangladesh, to South Africa, to Peru.
Sexual education and access to contraceptives are suppressed throughout the United States and worldwide. In response, feminist cooperatives have formed to provide DIY OB/GYN care, which includes abortion access.
Across the world, Black and indigenous pregnant people face staggering mortality rates in childbirth, are routinely denied adequate prenatal care, and face racism when attempting to access care. In the US, voter suppression and gerrymandering has resulted in a lack of political representation to favor white conservatives.
Disabled pregnant people are denied self-determination, and face stigma both in and outside of the doctor’s office.
The criminalization of substance use while pregnant has led to drug testing without consent and imprisonment for possessing a wide range of substances, including marijuana. The US denies formerly and currently incarcerated people the right to vote.
In nations including Denmark and Japan, trans people face strict mandates in order to access gender-affirming healthcare and legal documentation consistent with their identities. These mandates can include unwanted surgery. Meanwhile, the bodily autonomy of intersex people in almost every nation is disregarded — and only a handful of countries recommend against invasive surgeries on children who are unable to consent.
In all of these cases, the specter of rape culture looms large.
Anomaly invites people of all genders to contribute to our upcoming folio on reproductive justice and its intersections. Please send us your previously-unpublished fiction, creative nonfiction, poems, hybrid works, collages, comics, videos — basically send us your kickass art of whatever format (we love you) — in conversation with any aspect of reproductive justice and bodily autonomy to MyBodyAnomaly@gmail.com. This is an ongoing folio throughout the summer of 2019 and into the future.
We especially welcome work by those who are most frequently left out of conversations concerning reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, including people impacted by carceral injustices; disabled and neurodivergent people; people of color (especially Black and indigenous people); queer and trans people; sex workers; HIV+ people; migrants and the children of migrants; and all survivors. Anomaly will honor all requests to publish work anonymously.
Deadline: 7/31/2019
About Our Guest Editor: Genevieve Pfeiffer is Assistant Director at Anomaly, and writer and poet, and facilitates workshops with survivors of sexual assault and harassment. Her work is forthcoming or has been published in Erase the Patriarchy, Juked, So to Speak, Luna Luna, Stone Canoe, and more.
She blogs about outdoor wanderings and her project exploring herbal birth control’s intersections with witches, colonization, and personal and bioregional health at: https://medium.com/@GenevieveJeanne
Call for Submissions: Outside Roe was originally published in Anomaly on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.