Why Reproductive Justice Does Not Align With ProChoice Politics

“Reproductive rights” and “reproductive justice” are phrases used interchangeably, while in fact they are dueling movements amidst a growing power struggle.

The Reproductive Rights Movement is led by mid-upper class white feminists with a narrow agenda, that solely focuses on ending pregnancy through “pro-choice” activism. It has refused to incorporate anti-racism into its framework.

The Reproductive Justice movement is led by radical feminists of color and QTPOC who affirmatively incorporate an antiracist framework. RJ represents those who legally lost the “right to choose” four years after Roe v. Wade and addresses reproductive violences that remain ignored or unimportant by the former movement.

The new Black President of Planned Parenthood, Alexis McGill, has indicated that her vision is to lead the organization into a reproductive justice framework for the first time. This is great news considering the organization’s sordid history! It signals a real ideological shift towards justice.

Current Situation

Two weeks ago, Justice Roberts shrewdly sided with the liberal wing of SCOTUS in the June Medical v. Russo case. There was a flurry of activity on the internet since Roe v. Wade was upheld.

Yet last week, the Hyde Amendment, which allows the government to ban abortion funding for anyone on public assistance (predominantly low-income women of color), passed yet again in Congress, with little fanfare.

One day later, the feminist internet was in rightful outrage over Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania, which ruled that employers can use their religious views to ban birth control for its employees.

Amidst all the noise, the NYT piece, ‘I Can’t Focus On Abortion Access If My People Are Dying”, caught my eye. It centers Gen Z and millennial women of color who feel disconnected from the mainstream Reproductive Rights Movement. Brea Baker stated, “The narrative around abortion access wasn’t made for people from the hood”. And Baker was right. The law is absolutely inadequate to deal with reproductive “rights” in an intersectional way. Yet not once did the article mention the Reproductive Justice Movement, the framework that aligns with and supports the young people of color interviewed for the piece. This was concerning and made me question the author.

When Elle published, Women of Color Speak Out Against the Whitewashing of Reproductive Justice, I was encouraged to read that others felt the same about the NYT article. I realized that outside of those who engage in reproductive politics, the details about these two movements are elusive. So, I hope to provide a quick crash course into why reproductive justice is the progressive movement of the future for people like us (total assumption, but you are reading this blog ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).

What is Reproductive Justice?

Reproductive justice, a portmanteau of reproductive rights and social justice, is a political movement that was created in 1994 by twelve Black women in Chicago.

They were attending a conference about the Clinton Administration’s proposal for healthcare reform. The strategy of the centrist Democrats was to omit references to reproductive healthcare in their proposal, hoping they could pull a fast one on the Republicans (they didn’t). 

The few Black women in the room objected and decided to strategize. They sat in a hotel room and created the reproductive justice framework by incorporating the global women’s health movement and international human rights principles.

Their organizing began as ads in newspapers and with the vision of Loretta Ross, it has crystallized into the powerful movement that it is today.

Reproductive Justice includes:

Loretta Ross, who found Sister Song Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, needs her own paragraph. She is currently an Associate Professor of the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College. I recently listened to the Black Feminist Rants podcast featuring Loretta Ross, and there are so many gems. Her book, Reproductive Justice: An Introduction, is the bedrock in understanding this movement. If all you do is read her piece, The Color of Choice: White Supremacy and Reproductive Justice and click to another page and ignore everything else I write, I will have done my job.

Still reading? 

If so, a little more about the Reproductive Justice Movement. It moves beyond the pro-choice/anti-choice debates and centers the most vulnerable who have been sacrificed by the Reproductive Rights Movement as a strategy to achieve quick wins in legal cases.

Hyper Condensed History of Reproductive Politics in the US

“I have borne 13 children, and seen most sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?”

Sojourner Truth

The heteropatriarchal capitalist white supremacist US legal system, upon creation, claimed ownership over Black bodies, and that legacy continues to this day. Those who drafted the US Constitution had full control of the bodily autonomy and reproduction of Black bodies when they were writing this narrow, hypocritical document, which was created to uphold said system.

Before the Civil War, abortion and contraceptives were legal, and it was female midwives who performed these procedures. After slavery ended, however, these midwives were viewed as competition to the white males who claimed elite status as obstetricians and gynecologists (OB/GYNs).

These OB/GYNs did everything they could to make midwifery illegal. THEN, these white male OB/GYNs used Black women as test subjects for medical texts, where they were cut, maimed, sterilized . . . without anesthesia. Check out Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present for more information.

In 1875, the Page Act, prohibited “women from China, Japan or any other oriental country” from entering the US in order to protect American morals (Read: the fear of too many non-white babies). Simultaneously, white women were told to “spread their loins” in public campaigns. 

In the Victorian era, abortion was viewed as something that upper class white women did, thus the move to criminalize it, due to the fear of fewer white babies.

Enter Roe v. Wade (1972), where the Supreme Court issued a constitutional right to abortion. In 1976, however, the Hyde Amendment stripped the “right to choose” from poor women, who were disproportionately women of color. Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL), went so far to admit, “I certainly would like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman. Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the . . . Medicaid bill.”

Thus began the conservatives’ concerted legal strategy of incrementalism, where, through legislation, they chip away at the reproductive rights of the most vulnerable first, with the ultimate goal of undoing the reproductive rights given to all.

Since this country was “founded”, Indigenous and Black women have been survivors of repeated and disproportionate reproductive violence at the hands of the State. It is no coincidence that abortion bans have occurred in southern states, where poor Black women, specifically, have been targeted in recent years.

Women of color have disproportionately been forced or coerced into sterilization, shackled during pregnancy and childbirth and more. Yet, most of this goes under the radar in favor of solely focusing on abortion and contraceptive rights vis-a-vis the Reproductive Rights Movement.

Why I Support the Reproductive Justice Movement

As a queer first generation Indian-Muslim woman who has had to navigate the complicated reproductive world through pregnancies, contraceptives, birthing and hormonal irregularities, learning about the Reproductive Justice Movement years ago gave me life. Similar to how learning about intersectionality in college in the late ’90s gave me life. What I would have done to have had access to the theory that explained what I felt and witnessed. 

When I was in my mid-20s, a professor of mine, at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, made me write a paper against Roe v. Wade, while advocating for abortion rights. I was pissed. But it turned out to be an important assignment, and the reason why I decided to go to law school.

Disappointingly, I learned many lawyers had no resolution for incorporating reproductive justice, via organizing, into the Reproductive Rights Movement. The two movements were deemed incompatible and unfortunately, to many, they still are. 

My conclusion is that the US Constitution has not been, nor will it be, the source of our reproductive freedom. A well-organized mass movement made up of a broad and diverse coalition, led by radical women of color, will be.

The 5 most important understandings that I got from my assignment

1. The reproductive rights of poor women of color were sacrificed as a legal strategy in favor of the rights of middle class white women under the “right to privacy”

By not using the Equal Protection Clause, Roe v. Wade (1973) focused on a private (negative) right, not a public (positive) right. Just like any other national system that becomes privatized (think prisons or healthcare), those with money and privilege could obtain the right. Everyone else could not. 

In Roe, the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) said states could not ban abortions during the first and second trimester because “such laws violated a woman’s constitutional right to privacy in the personal matter of procreation”.

The Court ruled that having an abortion as a private matter was a liberty guaranteed under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. Except, the “right to privacy” doesn’t actually exist in the Constitution. It is based on a theoretical and nebulous “penumbra” or shadow of rights (which is why Conservatives chip away at this right and  say it doesn’t exist ). 

It is important to underscore that the right to privacy is a negative right. It simply meant the government could not enter your private sphere. It did not actually provide the right to an abortion. Some lawyers will tell you this is just precedent that was taken from Griswold v. Connecticut. But that’s lazy and/or avoidant. Even Justice Ruth Ginsburg was critical of the privacy right in Roe. The bloc of people who fought for Roe had institutional power, and their agenda refused to incorporate an anti-racist framework.

If the abortion right came out of the Equal Protection Clause, which is actually found in the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, all people would have been protected, since it is a positive, public right. This, however, was purposefully left out of the legal strategy in Roe, in order to quickly win.

Whether those who created this strategy knew they were sacrificing the rights of poor women of color may never be aired. What we do know is that this bloc created coalitions with conservative white women who were brought on board via the idea of “choice” and liberty (aka individualism).

Thus, a wedge was inserted into the Reproductive Rights Movement, and poor women of color got the message that they were discarded as unimportant and/or irrelevant.

2. The privacy right found in Roe was the opposite of what poor women wanted

Through Harris v. McCrae (1980), SCOTUS illustrated the ultimate meaning of Roe. If you have money, you can buy your choice to terminate a pregnancy. Without money, you don’t have that choice.

In 1976, the Hyde Amendment set forth by Congress severely limited the use of federal funds to reimburse the cost of abortions under the Medicaid program, and was “designed to deprive poor and minority women of the constitutional right to choose abortion”, according to Supreme Court Justice Strom Thurmond. 

In Harris, SCOTUS declared the Hyde Amendment constitutional and said that public funding of abortions was not required since Roe was argued under a privacy theory. SCOTUS stated that a woman’s freedom of choice did not carry with it “a constitutional entitlement to the financial resources to avail herself of the full range of protected choice.”

Instead, the privacy right was guaranteed for “a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy”, not to actually terminate the pregnancy (remember how it was a negative right?). The Court mentioned that the Equal Protection Clause was not a source of rights because it was not mentioned in Roe, and poor people were not a protected class.

Harris v. McCrae stripped away the abortion rights set forth in Roe from low income women of color, and this fact has sat under the mainstream radar for decades. The white feminist bloc, and the resources that followed them, were fervent about protecting the right to abortion under Roe, but were silent during Harris. Repealing the Hyde Amendment was not high on the agenda for those in power.

3. Fundamentalist Christian supremacy is the elephant in the room

Under Roe, we are all being governed by Christofascism, even if we do not follow fundamental interpretations of Christianity.

The rights fought for in Roe did not discuss the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment which prohibits the government from making any law “respecting the establishment of religion” (think separation of church and state). Yet there are various religious beliefs and backgrounds that permit abortion and contraception. For example, in Islam, abortion is permitted. Many other faiths, like Judaism, have similar beliefs. 

Under their strategy of incrementalism, Conservatives have decided to use the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to chisel away at reproductive rights via Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) laws. The Conservatives say laws that provide access to contraception or LGBTQ rights go against their religious (read: Christofascist) rights. And as you saw this past week in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania, SCOTUS used this reasoning to rule that employers could prevent their employees from obtaining contraception due to the employers religious belief.

The Conservatives claim to want to keep the government out of our lives, until they want to keep the government in it. Their desire for both simultaneously is about as hypocritical and convoluted as the US legal system.

4. The Reproductive Rights Movement has refused to incorporate reproductive violence that is perpetrated against poor women of color

The Reproductive Rights Movement is focused on abortion and contraception, full stop. It does not involve itself with other forms of reproductive violence enacted predominantly upon women of color.

For example, poor women of color (predominantly Indigenous, Black and Puerto Rican) have always been forced or coerced into sterilization. This started when the US was “founded” under the guise of eugenics and population control, and continues to this day, especially if one is on welfare. California just made forced/coerced sterilization illegal in 2014, but you can find many stories about this if you look. It is happening in prisons as we speak.

Currently, Black women are dying during childbirth at alarming rates.  Black families are disproportionately separated by the criminal injustice system at alarming rates as well. If interested in learning more, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty, is a good place to start.

We still live in a time where Latinx immigrant families are separated, with babies and pregnant people held in cages. And then there are the mothers who are incarcerated and shackled while giving birth . . .

5. Reproductive Justice is integrally related to mass incarceration

It is extremely important to underscore the shift from criminalizing abortion providers to those who have abortions. Before Roe, doctors could go to prison. Even after Roe, Black doctors were targeted with the goal of incarcerating them.

Now, lawmakers have put the onus on the person having abortions, where they would become incarcerated. Recently, Asian women have been especially targeted by these draconian laws. This illustrates why the Reproductive Justice Movement must be intersectional and aligned with the prison and police abolition movements. 

“From forced sterilization to family separation, the carceral state itself is an act of reproductive violence,” writes long-time prison abolitionist and organizer Mariame Kaba. Kaba is just one of many Black feminists who have been arguing for decades that a framework of reproductive justice, rather than reproductive rights, must take into account the role of prisons and policing in the fight for true reproductive and bodily autonomy.

An intersectional mass movement led by radical women of color is the answer to our collective reproductive freedom

It is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences and to examine the distortions that result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation.

Audre Lorde

The Reproductive Justice Movement is intersectional and focuses on building a diverse grassroots coalition in order to build a large mass movement, since this is how effective social change occurs. This Movement, led by radical feminists of color, depends on comprehensive coalition work that addresses the intersecting injustices that overlap with reproductive violence such as housing, healthcare, education, voting, racial justice, the environment and more. 

In 2020, it is no longer efficacious for the bloc of white feminists who mobilized around Roe to resist the inclusion of the Reproductive Justice framework (and the people who come with it). Doing so is really bad politics. These blinders and holes create entry points for Conservatives to chisel away at the few rights that exist for some.

Historically, when there is a positive movement towards justice, people of different backgrounds have come together. Yet, if a movement is centered around triangulating and consolidating power, that has not been the case. 

Laws don’t create movements; Movements create laws

Considering that Planned Parenthood has finally decided to change its tune (or is trying to) and incorporate the reproductive justice framework, is a testament to the organizing power of the 12 Black women who started the movement in 1994. As Loretta Ross succinctly stated, “The movement is not the personal property of middle-class white women who resent having to share spatial, definitional or leadership power with women of color who have a complex set of reactions to abortion politics as they are presently debated by the right and the left”. 

My hope is that the same young people of TikTok and K-Pop fame engage/join/lead the powerful and growing Reproductive Justice Movement. As this young generation of activists and organizers are refreshingly attuned to the power of mass movement building as the route to long lasting social change and justice.