Reproductive Justice: Choosing a Broader Movement
Digg This!Recently the Tides Foundation released this brief about expanding the reproductive justice movement. Click here to read their entire brief
Introduction: Envisioning Reproductive JusticeDuring the 19th and 20th centuries, the women’s movement in the U.S. made tremendous gains. We have a great deal to celebrate, and consequently a great deal to defend. As if in backwards motion, the 21st century is proving to be more politically treacherous, particularly in the area of reproductive justice. Since 1995, states have passed nearly 400 measures blocking access to essential reproductive health services. Although we still have Roe, the right to have an abortion has been systematically eroded, state by state, and is now in more peril than at any time since its passage. Increasingly, women across the U.S. lack access to basic reproductive health services and are struggling daily with a host of reproductive injustices that the traditional reproductive rights movement has yet to include in its advocacy efforts.As a consequence, a large-scale shift is occurring in the movement itself, from a traditional “reproductive rights” framework to a broader one, being defined as Òreproductive justiceÓ. In talking with a number of women’s organizations, working at the grassroots level, the following vision emerges for what reproductive justice would look like in the U.S. In this vision, every woman and girl would have:
- quality reproductive health care that is accessible, affordable, culturally appropriate and available in her language
- the right to live and work in an environment that is free of toxins that would compromise her reproductive health
- comprehensive school sex-education
- access to contraception and affordable abortion services
- a living wage
- equal rights if she identifies as LGBT
- freedom from sexual, emotional, and physical abuse and violence
- equity with men in the research dollars spent studying illnesses that affect her body
- food and water that is healthy and affordable, and;
- immigration policies that do not destabilize her family or erect barriers to services.
To achieve this vision, a vibrant U.S. Reproductive Justice movement would have:
- a large and diverse base of organized support with the power to compel decision makers into positive action
- a solid and balanced infrastructure of service delivery, advocacy, grassroots organizing, media, and research organizations, to support fundamental social and policy change
- the internal strength of strong alliances among reproductive health and justice organizations and an external strength of connections with other key social justice movements such as the environmental and labor movements
- at its center the goal of empowering all women to become active and engaged leaders in transforming the structures that impact their lives and the lives of their children and communities
