Assemblages and Actor Networks in the Borderlands - The Apposition of Reproductive Rights along the Mexican-American Border

Authors

Madeleine M. Plasencia, University of Miami School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Winter 2024

Abstract

In 1971, Sarah Weddington argued Roe v. Wade as a class action on behalf of pregnant women living in Texas, many of whom, including herself had to flee the State to obtain an abortion in Mexico. In 2021, Texas enacted S. B. 8, otherwise known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, which created a private cause of action for injunctive relief and statutory damages awards against any person assisting in and any physician accused of performing an abortion, thus reigniting the cross-border flows that historically have made Mexico a haven for runaway enslaved people and pregnant persons heading south to freedom. The Supreme Court of the United States discussed S. B. 8 and its effects in the context of a pre-enforcement challenge invoked in Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson. Using social science and philosophy understandings of Assemblage Theory and Actor-Network Theory, Professor Madeleine Plasencia offers a novel socio-legal theory for understanding how law and legal interpretation configure complex actor-network and assemblages connecting multiple contiguous political territories, creating a meta version of networks bridging Texas, Mexico, and parts between and beyond. Moreover, since S. B. 8 does away with traditional requirements of nexus and standing to sue, it outsources enforcement of its attack on reproductive rights to the world, raising vigilantes to officially sanctioned status, displacing virtuous actor-networks aimed at assisting pregnant persons with vicious networks of surveillance, thus reconstituting preexisting actor-networks to produce autopoietic systems of domination powered by pitting neighbor contra neighbor.

To understand the full impact of Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson and state laws such as S. B. 8, Plasencia theorizes the operation of the law from the perspective of the actor-networks it constitutes and reconstitutes, how these reconstituted assemblages activate new actors from fetal heartbeat actants to doctor-nurse-reporters, donors, neighbor-snitches, and recalcitrant acompañantes, and how these actor-networks, generate new social relations of power and vulnerability that are virulent and vicious rather than supportive and compassionate.

Recommended Citation

Madeleine M. Plasencia, Assemblages and Actor Networks in the Borderlands - The Apposition of Reproductive Rights along the Mexican-American Border, 24 J.L. Soc'y 115 (2024).