Reproductive (In)Justice and Inequality in the Lives of Women with Intellectual Disabilities in Scotland

This paper presents an empirical exploration of women with intellectual disabilities’ experiences of reproductive (in)justice in Scotland. The findings build on feminist disability scholarship and call for recognition of women with intellectual disabilities’ reproductive rights. By doing so we foreground the insights of women with intellectual disabilities in their own words, to confront that, despite significant global policy recognition of equality and human rights, there has been little impact on the lived experiences of women with intellectual disabilities in Scotland. This paper draws on the experiences of women with intellectual disabilities by focusing on their shared ontologies of inequality and by prioritising their words. The paper seeks to bring attention to the health inequalities that shape higher mortality rates for women with intellectual disabilities in Scotland and reconstruct a narrative of health parity that includes women’s bodies and reproductive experiences. The paper argues that women with intellectual disabilities want and would benefit from life-long, accessible, and equitable sexual and reproductive health education around menstruation, contraceptive decision making, and menopause and that these are fundamental to realising rights to health and wellbeing.