Photo by Gayatri Malhotra at a protest holding a sign that reads "your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child BORN, but not a child FED, not a child EDUCATED, not a child HOUSED. THAT'S NOT PRO-LIFE. THAT'S PRO-BIRTH."
“[Reproductive justice] has three primary values:
1) the right not to have a child;
2) the right to have a child;
and 3) the right to parent children in safe and healthy environments. In addition, reproductive justice demands sexual autonomy and gender freedom for every human being…
Reproductive justice is a theory, a practice, and a strategy that can provide a common language and broader unity in movements for women’s health and rights. It defines the complicated, intersectional injuries endured and enables the re-envisioning of collective futures.”
~ Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice by Loretta Ross, Jael Silliman, Elena R. Gutiérrez, and Marlene Gerber Fried, originally published in 2004
The history of the reproductive justice movement involves many groups of people (mostly women) of color, and particularly Black women, gathering and pushing the fight for reproductive rights beyond the singular issue of abortion into a deeper analysis of intertwining issues. This included naming and addressing how race, class, gender, sexuality, and nationality play out in the daily lives of women of color throughout the U.S. Over time reproductive justice has come to include trans/nonbinary folks as well.
Groups such as SisterSong, National Latina Health Organization (NLHO), National Asian Women’s Health Organization (NAWHO), and African American Women Evolving/Black Women for Reproductive Justice (AAWE/BWRJ) were involved in developing the concept and praxis behind reproductive justice.
By focusing on Reproductive Justice as the theme for our first issue, we aim to feature pieces from folks fighting CPS’s involvement in their families, getting reproductive healthcare to their communities, advocating for their clients seeking asylum and birthcare, recognizing the foster care to prison (and vice versa) pipeline, searching to reunite families separated by U.S. border policy, and more. We hope to gather pieces from former foster youth, birth parents, adoptees, and professionals (birthwork, legal, adoption professionals among others) across the U.S. (and potentially beyond as well) who can help us puzzle together what is going on with reproductive justice and the foster care, child welfare, and adoption systems right here, right now.
In terms of language and how it evolves, we are aware that this conversation concerns many people who identify as women. This conversation also includes many people who don’t. Our team acknowledges that for many of us we have internalized ways we talk about topics like gender without question or that other generations have used language in the context of the time, not as an exclusionary tactic, and it can be hard to be aware of.
Whether you are submitting an article, video, or visual art piece, we ask you to scrutinize the language and definitions you’re working with and if they are exclusionary either make clear why you’ve used certain language or definitions in places (if there’s a specific reason that is not transphobic) or change it. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to reach out and contact us.
We are interested in articles, videos, visual art, and other multimedia pieces that explore the intersections of identities, experiences, and locations with the issues of family separation through foster care and adoption and how those relate to reproduction justice.
We provided the following questions as examples. You can write directly to one of the questions or pull the general ethos and write about something else.
Additionally, the next section with our launch event exercises are great examples of what folks are interested in seeing and discussing.
Please contact us if you have any questions!
- How have bodily autonomy and reproductive justice conversations changed in the U.S. post Roe v. Wade being overturned in 2022?
- What does this mean for the adoption, foster care, and child welfare industries? How did adoption become positioned as “the solution” to abortion? What is the issue at hand and how does this binary obscure or reveal that issue?
- How do indigenous sovereignty and reproductive justice intersect?
- When considering parental “fitness” how do racism and reproductive justice intersect?
- How does language around the right to reproduction/family formation and the real life consequences of people accessing non-traditional forms of conception (IVF, surrogacy, gamete transfers, etc.) complicate how we understand adoption?
- How do immigration (via or not via international adoption) and reproductive justice interact? How have they played out within different communities of immigrants and how have those effects changed based on the race, class, country of origin, etc. of the group?
- Based on the concept of “the right to parent their children in safe and healthy environments” in what ways do you see reproductive justice intersecting with family preservation strategies and systems of family separation?
Click through for the results of our jamboard and word cloud exercises from our launch events. Thanks to everyone who contributed their thoughts to the exercises!
Interested in submitting?
FIRST, view our general submission guidelines for writers and artists. You can submit at the bottom of that page.
General Submission GuidelinesShare with your friends!
