Britney’s conservatorship is one example of how the legacy of eugenics in the US continues to affect the lives of disabled women
By Michaela Kathleen Curran,
The Conversation
| 10. 01. 2021
Photo by Mike Maguire on Flickr
Britney Spears has been locked in a court battle 13 years in the making. While her father was suspended as conservator of her estate on Sep. 29, 2021, her conservatorship might not be terminated until the next hearing on Nov. 12.
During this conservatorship, she was limited in her ability to make everyday choices that most people take for granted.
One revelation that came out of Spears’ emotional testimony was that she was not allowed to go off birth control.
“[T]his so-called team won’t let me go to the doctor to take [my IUD] out because they don’t want me to have children — any more children,” Spears said.
Spears’ anguish over the loss of her reproductive agency was palpable. And her story is one shared by disabled women across the country who are denied the right to make decisions about their sexual and reproductive health.
Ensuring the reproductive rights of disabled women is a professional and personal issue for me. I am a public health researcher at the University of Iowa studying the...
Related Articles
Since the “CRISPR babies” scandal in 2018, no additional genetically modified babies are known to have been born. Now several techno-enthusiastic billionaires are setting up privately funded companies to genetically edit human embryos, with the explicit intention of creating genetically modified children.
Heritable genome editing remains prohibited by policies in the overwhelming majority of countries that have any relevant policy, and by a binding European treaty. Support for keeping it legally off limits is widespread, including among scientists...
By Sophie Alexander and Ike Swetlitz, Bloomberg | 06.25.2025
A California-startup focused on genetically editing human embryos — a step toward creating so-called designer babies — is raising money as many of Silicon Valley’s ultra-rich turn their attention to one of the most controversial technologies in medicine.
Bootstrap Bio...
By Ed Cara, Gizmodo | 06.22.2025
In late May, several scientific organizations, including the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy (ISCT), banded together to call for a 10-year moratorium on using CRISPR and related technologies to pursue human heritable germline editing. The declaration also outlined...
By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 06.05.2025
Brian Armstrong, the billionaire CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, says he’s ready to fund a US startup focused on gene-editing human embryos. If he goes forward, it would be the first major commercial investment in one of medicine’s most...