All three tenets of reproductive justice — the right to have children, the right not to have children, and the right to parent in safe environments and with dignity — have been decimated through the systematic sexual, reproductive and gender-based violence inflicted on Palestinians by the Israeli security forces in Gaza since October 2023.
Healthcare facilities in Gaza have been destroyed, undermining sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Palestinians in Gaza lack access to contraception and abortion, violating the right not to have children.
Palestinians in Gaza face total inability to parent safely, violating the third tenet of reproductive justice.
The authors document sexual, reproductive, and gender-based violence inflicted on Palestinians by Israeli security forces as systematic.
The authors argue that the term 'reproductive genocide' accurately captures the conditions in Gaza.
This commentary examines the impact of the conflict in Gaza since October 2023 on sexual and reproductive health and rights. The authors use a framework called 'reproductive justice,' which holds that people have three core rights: the right to have children, the right not to have children, and the right to raise children in safe and dignified conditions. They document how each of these rights has been severely undermined in Gaza through the destruction of healthcare facilities, lack of access to contraception and abortion, and conditions that make safe parenting impossible. This research suggests that the conflict has created conditions where fundamental aspects of reproductive life — from pregnancy care to family planning to child-rearing — have been rendered inaccessible or impossible for Palestinians in Gaza. The authors document sexual and gender-based violence as part of this broader pattern and argue these violations are systematic rather than incidental outcomes of conflict. The authors conclude by introducing the term 'reproductive genocide' to describe what they characterize as the wholesale destruction of reproductive life in Gaza. This commentary is notable for applying a rights-based analytical framework — reproductive justice — to document and categorize violations occurring in an active conflict zone, and for arguing that existing humanitarian language may be insufficient to describe the scale and nature of the reproductive harms being documented.
Freeman C, Shoman H. (2025). No justice in a genocide: sexual and reproductive health and rights in Gaza.. Sexual and reproductive health matters. https://doi.org/10.1080/26410397.2025.2523095