On June 23, singer Britney Spears testified before a Los Angeles probate judge about the abusive behavior she has endured under the conservatorship granted to her father Jamie Spears in 2008. Spears said she was forced to keep an IUD inserted, lacked control over her finances while being forced to work, and was even forced to take lithium. For vocal members of the #FreeBritney movement, her testimony validated their activism in support of the singer being removed from her conservatorship.
Even if Britney Spears needs to continue to work to manage her bipolar disorder, she still deserves rights.
Spears has been under a conservatorship for thirteen years following her public struggles with bipolar disorder since 2008. During this time, Spears has released four albums, had a Las Vegas residency, and was a judge on the television program The X–Factor. While many people following the case, including myself, found Spears’s testimony to be shocking, the actions taken against her are likely legal under a conservatorship, as conservators are able to make financial and medical decisions for those whom they oversee. This level of control can lead to conservatorships becoming abusive, as Spears said hers was.
“I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive, and that we can sit here all day and say, ‘oh, conservatorships are here to help people,’ but ma’am, there are a thousand conservatorships that are abusive as well,” Spears told the court.
Even if they are not under conservatorships, disabled people regularly experience higher rates of domestic violence, sexual assault, and abuse than people who are not disabled.
Many #FreeBritney supporters say that, since Spears is no longer mentally ill or disabled, she should be released from her conservatorship. But having bipolar disorder or another mental health condition should not mean that someone’s freedom should be limited. Even if Spears needs to continue to work to manage her bipolar disorder, she still deserves rights.
Pádraig Elliot, a journalist in the United Kingdom who lives with bipolar II disorder, tells The Progressive that, even for people who support Spears, “the idea that anyone can assess how mentally ill Britney is because they follow her social media channels is absurd, with the potential for dangerous consequences when applied more widely.”
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Britney Spears
Elliot also understands Spears’s desire to get out of a conservatorship without being evaluated for her mental health. “I totally empathize with Britney’s refusal to submit herself to mental health evaluation,” he says. “By doing so, she would be implicitly accepting that the conservatorship was once an appropriate course of action.”
Additionally, when considering Spears’s testimony that she has not been able to have her IUD removed, it is important to look at her reproductive rights from a disability rights perspective. Spears is unable to have children because people on her conservatorship team may view her as “too incompetent” to have children.
The American Civil Liberties Union’s Zoe Brennan-Krohn and Rebecca McCray explained that courts often approve of people with disabilities losing their rights to reproductive freedom. “Spears’s experience is part of a long history of people with disabilities—most often people of color—being forcibly sterilized, forced to end pregnancies, or losing the right to raise their own children,” they wrote in an article for ACLU’s website.
Conservatorships are not necessarily abusive, they can be helpful in making sure that some disabled and elderly people receive appropriate medical care and are not abused. However, more oversight is needed to make sure that these arrangements do not harm people, as Spears said hers does. Around 1.3 million people in the United States are under conservatorships, according to the National Council on Disability. Spears’s testimony could play a role in pushing for more oversight and protections for disabled people.
On July 1, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bob Casey wrote a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice to request data on conservatorships.
Spears, like all disabled and mentally ill people, has her own agency, and her voice should be listened to when she says her conservatorship is abusive. Abusive conservatorships hurt the rights of the entire disability community. As disabled lawyer Haley Moss wrote in an op-ed for Teen Vogue, “to free Britney is to free all of us.”