Britney Spears has been controlled by her father for over 13 years although she is finally freed from her case embodies a failed system for women’s reproductive rights. Spears’ conservatorship started back in 2008 when the Los Angeles Superior Court approved it.
For years she was legally declared incapable of making her own decisions. When is too much enough? When a woman has to plead to remove a plastic thing that prevents her from forming a family is enough.
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: She told the court that she wanted to remove the birth control device “so I could start trying to have another baby, but 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.” she said.
According to The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Reproductive rights rest on the recognition of the basic rights of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing, and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health.
Forced contraception is not a basic human right when Spears wanted another baby with her current fiance. Spears along with so many American women fear and have to face reproductive coercion. Women should be in control of their health and no one especially not a man should ever intervene.
And especially now, as the Supreme Court is preparing to strip women of their right to abortion, the Spears case looms especially large. The Texas abortion law in its order, made on Oct. 22 agreed to review this law on Nov. 1 but will not block the law in the meantime.
“I deserve to have the same rights as anybody does, by having a child, a family, any of those things,” Spears said in her testimony. She has spotlighted dialogue and conversations of reproduction coercion on-court and social media. On Instagram, she shared her gratitude for her the people who were involved in the #FreeBritney movement.
“#FreeBritney movement … I have no words … because of you guys and your constant resilience in freeing me from my conservatorship … my life is now in that direction !!!!! I cried last night for two hours cause my fans are the best and I know it … I feel your hearts and you feel mine … that much I know is true 💞 !!!!!” she wrote on Instagram.
Although Britney Spears is free from conservatorship, the trauma of someone controlling your reproductive system lives in many women’s lives.