Taking Action for Reproductive Justice: Our Favorite Tools, Resources, and Data
With the historic 50-year anniversary of Roe v. Wade (January 22, 2023) around the corner and basic reproductive rights deeply entrenched in politicized debate across the U.S., reproductive justice has again taken center stage.
Reproductive justice—a framework developed by Women of Color in the 1990s—combines reproductive rights with social justice and lifts up the marginalized individuals, families, and communities excluded by the early reproductive rights movement. It includes the rights to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent children in safe, accessible, healthy, sustainable communities. Reproductive justice is achieved when marginalized people—especially women, girls, and people who are LGBTQ+, disabled, low-income, undocumented, and/or of color—are able to freely and equitably exercise these rights.
In practice, reproductive justice involves explicitly naming and addressing the United States’ long legacies of reproductive abuses, and advancing reproductive rights and health from an intersectional, whole-person, community-centered perspective. Because reproductive control is a gateway to controlling entire populations, reproductive justice is key to dismantling hierarchies of inequity, wealth, and power. With this end goal in mind, movement-building for reproductive justice must always acknowledge, collaborate with, and advance justice movements for all marginalized people and our shared environment and communities.
This collection focuses specifically on taking action. It houses some of our favorite tools, toolkits, resources, datasets, maps, policy briefs, and stories related to reproductive justice, reproductive rights, maternal health, and key intersectional topics.
Because reproductive justice is so broad, action can take many forms. Key actions to start with include:
- Advocating for reproductive rights, including access to contraception, birth control, and pregnancy termination
- Eliminating disparities in prenatal, childbirth, and postpartum care, especially for Black women, birthing people, and infants
- Improving healthcare for families, infants, and children
- Addressing the United States’ long history of forced and coerced sterilization—including BIPOC, Puerto Rican, low-income, disabled, transgender, and intersex people—and the ongoing impacts these legacies have on marginalized communities today
- Banning modern coerced and nonconsensual sterilization practices for people who are disabled, incarcerated, and/or detained im/migrants
- Combatting ageist and sexist biases about "preserving fertility" to allow for consensual, informed sterilization
- Advocating for all states to accept transgender and nonbinary peoples' identification document updates without proof of surgeries, which often involve sterilization
- Ending involuntary, medically unnecessary gender reassignment and sterilization surgeries of intersex infants and children
- Expanding access to family planning, fertility, pregnancy, foster, and adoption services for LGBTQ+ families and parents
- Expanding culturally competent, gender-affirming healthcare and mental healthcare for LGBTQ+ people of all ages
- Ending domestic, intimate partner, sexual, and child abuse
- Addressing issues with family policing, separation, and foster care, especially for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color
- Ensuring disabled people's right to exist without fear of erasure through eugenics, gene editing, and/or sterilization
Please reach out with any suggested actions, resources, stories, or tools you think should be included here. We are committed to advancing reproductive justice and would love to hear from you.
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by: Serin Bond-Yancey (they/any). Serin is a Disabled, queer, nonbinary, multiply-neurodivergent, antiracist accomplice. Serin serves as the Executive Director of the Transgender Health and Wellness Center of Washington (Trans-Wa), and works with a diverse portfolio of nonprofits as an Impact, Equity, and Accessibility Consultant.
Reproductive Justice Tools, Data, and Maps
Disability Rights and Heritable Genome Editing: Resources for Teaching and Learning
Resource - Data Bank/repository
Maternal and Child Health Digital Library
Resource - Data Bank/repository
Brought to you by HHS Health Resources and Services Administration
Reproductive Justice Voices and Stories
I Want to Be Like Nature Made Me: Medically Unnecessary Surgeries on Intersex Children in the US
Story - Written
Brought to you by Human Rights Watch
How the US Polarized on Abortion — Even As Most Americans Stayed in the Middle
Story - Written
Brought to you by Vox
Deviancy, Dependency, and Disability: The Forgotten History of Eugenics and Mass Incarceration
Resource - Journal Article
Teen Pregnancy in New Mexico
Story
-
Original
Brought to you by Community Commons
Published on 03/01/2017
Bearing the Burden: How racism-related stress hurts America’s black mothers and babies
Story
-
Original
Brought to you by Community Commons
Published on 10/02/2018
Premature Birth Rates Rise Again, But A Few States Are Turning Things Around
Story
Brought to you by NPR
Reproductive Justice Research and Policies
“My Body, Whose Choice?” A Call to Advance Reproductive Justice in Pediatric Training
Resource - Journal Article
Brought to you by American Academy of Pediatrics
Forced Sterilization of Disabled People in the United States
Resource - Report
Brought to you by National Women's Law Center
Financial Instability and Delays in Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health Care Due to COVID-19
Resource - Journal Article
Brought to you by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
Reproductive Justice: Voices Not Just Choices
Resource - Blog
Brought to you by University of Alabama at Birmingham
The History of Tiered-Effectiveness Contraceptive Counseling and the Importance of Patient-Centered Family Planning Care
Resource - Journal Article
Brought to you by Elsevier, Inc.
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Assisted Reproductive Technology Outcomes in the United States
Resource - Journal Article
Brought to you by Elsevier, Inc.
Reduced Disparities in Birth Rates Among Teens Aged 15-19 Years - United States, 2006-2007 and 2013-2014
Resource - Report
Brought to you by CDC
An Unconditional Prenatal Income Supplement Reduces Population Inequities In Birth Outcomes
Resource - Journal Article
Brought to you by Health Affairs
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