Over this past week and you have been watching videos about reproductive justice. According to SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, the first organization founded to build a reproductive justice movement, reproductive justice is “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.
Reproductive justice is different than the reproductive rights movements of the 1970s. The term is a combination of reproductive rights and social justice. It was coined by a group of black women who called themselves Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice and is rooted in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an internationally accepted body of laws that details the rights of individuals and the responsibilities of governments to protect those rights. The reproductive rights movement focused primarily on pro-choice vs. pro-life debates and legal rights. Frequently, women with low incomes, women of color, women with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people felt marginalized in the reproductive rights movement. Reproductive justice is more intersectional and considers how race and social class can limit the freedom of some women to make informed choices about pregnancy. Reproductive justice focuses on access to services like abortion, Plan B, affordable care, and education. It goes beyond rights and looks at the barriers that exist and inhibit access (such as cost, distance to providers, etc.). The reproductive justice framework also considers a wider range of issues than reproductive rights. Issues that impact marginalized women such as access to contraception, comprehensive sex education, prevention and care for STI/Ds, alternative birth options, adequate prenatal and pregnancy care, domestic violence assistance, adequate wages to support families and safe homes are considered within the reproductive justice framework.
The videos assigned include The Abortion Divide which focuses on a clinic and the debates around access. The other video is a satirical explanation of the Burwell v. Hobby and Birth Control case of 2014.
In the devastating Burwell v. Hobby Lobby ruling, on June 30, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed certain bosses to block their employees’ access to birth control. The decision on this Supreme Court birth control case applied to more than half of all U.S. workers — that’s the tens of millions of workers at companies in which five or fewer people own more than 50%. Two privately-owned companies brought the case: cabinet manufacturer Conestoga Wood Specialties, and the Hobby Lobby national chain of craft stores, which employs 28,000. The owners of these companies objected to having health insurance plans that included birth control — a coverage guarantee under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that has allowed nearly 63 million American women to access affordable birth control and has saved existing benefit recipients at least $1.4 billion on birth control pills alone since the provision went into effect (in 2013).
https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/birth-control/burwell-v-hobby-lobby
These two videos certainly do not encapsulate all that is involved with reproductive justice. But they are a start. I also recommend the film Vessel, which follows Women On Waves, an innovative reproductive justice intervention to help pregnant people internationally. I included a playlist of many videos that address other areas of concern for reproductive justice advocates, including history, organizing, paid family leave, consent, menstruation, birth control, surrogacy, and more. I encourage you to take a look. Some other resources I recommend include this short audio track about a network of clergy that helped people seeking an abortion 50 years ago, and this short film Abortion Helpline: This is Lisa:
