The Sexual Politics of the New Abolitionism

Elizabeth Bernstein’s article is a key entry point for understanding carceral feminism. It traces how U.S. anti-trafficking politics brought together feminist concern, evangelical moral politics, and state punishment, turning anti-exploitation language toward policing, border control, and criminalization.

The article matters because it does not simply deny violence in sexual labor. Instead, it asks why certain anti-violence solutions treat state punishment as the primary answer. Bernstein shows how the “new abolitionism” draws on nineteenth-century abolition, contemporary human rights discourse, and conservative sexual morality while intensifying regulation over sex workers, migrants, and trafficked people.

For FemRes, this text links sex worker rights, migration, anti-sexual violence, and prison abolition. It helps readers ask whether feminist anti-violence politics are expanding safety or expanding punishment.