Free Britney Comes at a Time of Crisis for Reproductive Freedom

by Nicole Hemmer

Nicole Hemmer is an associate research scholar at Columbia University with the Obama Presidency Oral History Project and the author of Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics. She co-hosts the history podcasts "Past Present" and "This Day in Esoteric Political History" and is co-producer of the podcast "Welcome To Your Fantasy."

For 13 years, people other than Britney Spears have been running her life.

Locked in a conservatorship controlled by her father, Jamie Spears, since 2008, the 39-year-old pop singer lost nearly all of her personal autonomy. She did not control her movement from place to place, her performance schedule, her $60 million fortune or her health care decisions. And, in one of the most harrowing details of the conservatorship, she lost control over her body and her ability to have children.

When Spears appeared in court in June, she told the judge that she had pleaded with the people who controlled her conservatorship to allow her to remove an IUD so she could have a third child. In emotional testimony, she said they denied her request: "This so-called team won't let me go to the doctor to take it out because they don't want me to have children, any more children."

On Wednesday, a judge agreed to remove Jamie Spears from the conservatorship, bringing Spears a step closer to regaining her freedom. But this isn't the end of the conservatorship -- and even ending the conservatorship will not make Britney Spears whole. For more than a decade, she has been denied the most personal of all freedoms: the freedom to choose to have children.

And she is not alone. The stark reality is that women in the United States do not have, and have never had, full reproductive autonomy. In addition to shedding light on the realities of conservatorship for a host of those who do not share her fame, Spears's struggle helps highlight the moral catastrophe of those limitations, especially at a moment when women's reproductive rights are under renewed attack.

Contemporary discussions of reproductive rights usually center on the decision to end a pregnancy, not start one. That's perhaps one reason why Spears's pleas have gained so much attention: she is arguing for the right to have a child. But for opponents of women's reproductive autonomy, abortion, birth control and sexual freedom have long been connected -- if a woman can control her ability to get and remain pregnant, then she has far more control over how often, and with whom, she has sex.

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