Summary, part 2

On Abortion

“Access to safe abortion is both a fundamental human right and central to women’s health” (p. 12). 

Reproductive autonomy is a core aspect of reproductive justice because, in order to control their own lives, women must be able to control their reproductive destiny. This goal of reproductive autonomy requires “access to safe abortion, comprehensive sex education, freedom from coerced sex, and birth control appropriate to each woman’s health and life. It also requires that women have all that they need to have and raise children” (p. 12). In the U.S., the political right has made anti-abortion a key sentiment on their conservative platform’s agenda. As a result, this issue dominates the discussion and implementation of reproductive/sexual politics across the globe, while making persistent threats against abortion.

Despite Roe v. Wade—the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion across the U.S.—being a significant progression in reproductive rights, the “right” to abortion is still limited by one’s race, gender, sexuality, age, ability, and income. Abortion access for all is an essential aspect of reproductive justice, and the authors illustrate this by providing readers with examples of how abortion access intersects with other liberation movements and areas of inequality. Abortion is a matter of racial inequality, economic justice, youth issues, violence, religious intolerance, immigrants’ rights, disability rights, and imperialism.

After Roe v. Wade, low-income women—many of whom were women of color—initially had abortions covered by Medicaid, which paid for almost half of all U.S. abortions. But three years later in 1976, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment—a legislative provision barring the use of federal funds to pay for abortion—banning Medicaid coverage of abortion. This goes against reproductive justice, which requires that all women and girls have the power and resources to make decisions about their bodies, lives, families, and communities. The restoration of Medicaid abortion coverage and the repeal of the Hyde Amendment is a matter of racial justice and economic justice as much as it is one of women’s rights.

Reproductive Justice and Women of Color

For women of color, using the reproductive justice framework in social justice work is “second nature” because the disparities found in reproductive health are multifaceted; the struggle has been about reproductive autonomy, about both the right to have an abortion and the right to conceive, bear, and raise children with dignity (p. 15). The author posits that reproductive justice is the missing link for women of color in the larger movement’s attempts to partner with and include women of color. Since this framework “highlights the intersectionality of race, class, and gender,” it does not take on the singular perspective of the pro-choice movement, which often solely focuses on abortion rights (p. 15). Reproductive Justice addresses the right to have an abortion and the right to conceive, bear, and raise children with dignity, which has been as much of a fight for women of color as the right to abortion has been.

Asian and Pacific Islander (API) women are in particular negatively impacted by policies attempting to control their bodies, reproduction, and sexuality. Barriers for API women include, but are not limited to, a lack of access to healthcare which in turn leads to mistrust in medicine, hazardous low-wage employment, human trafficking which creates a lack of access to healthcare, unwanted pregnancies, forced abortions, and STIs, exposure to environmental toxins in the workplace and at home which are linked to infertility, miscarriage, and birth defects, and anti-immigration policy.

Reproductive Justice and Immigration

Immigrant rights and reproductive justice are “intrinsically linked because the reproductive health of immigrant women is profoundly affected by immigration policy” (p. 19). Advocates for immigration reform are demanding access to educational, health, and safety-net programs and systems and employment with basic protections and benefits, including healthcare coverage. Similarly, reproductive justice activists are fighting for women’s equal opportunity to fully participate in society, control their reproductive destinies, and receive reproductive health services without discrimination, harassment, and shame. Since both movements have been deemed “radical,” their opposition has proven successful in eroding their basic rights at state and federal levels. It is important to note that the same people who want to erode immigrant women’s access to basic healthcare, like prenatal care, are the same ones in opposition to both abortion and contraception.

Many policies have attempted to limit the number of immigrant births in the U.S. by revoking birthright citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants. These anti-immigrant sentiments echo those of the 1990’s, where welfare reformers assumed that childbearing by low-income women of color or immigrant women creates a “cycle of poverty and dependence on the government” (p. 20). However, these depictions of low-income women of color and immigrant women are wrong. Studies show that documented and undocumented immigrants access welfare services at a much lower rate than U.S.-born citizens, and under the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, new immigrants were barred from Medicaid access for five years.

Many policy-makers have also used this anti-immigrant, nativist rhetoric as a pathway to attempt to revoke the reproductive rights of all women, furthering anti-choice agendas and claiming abortion is to blame for the “illegal immigration problem” because it causes a shortage of “American” workers (p. 21). This displays just how intrinsically linked the Reproductive Justice and immigrants’ rights movements are and how activists must be fighting for both.

Reproductive Justice and LGBTQ+ Liberation

The movements for reproductive justice and LGBTQ+ liberation have been divided strategically in the past, but there is common ground for both liberation movements. The interconnectedness of these movements arises from the attacks from the political right on both of these groups, seeking to “control sexuality, gender conformity, reproductive choice and the legal definitions of family” (p. 18).

The authors mention that right-wing extremist policies attacking reproductive justice and LGBTQ+ liberation have “detrimental effects on us all” (p. 18). One example of this is the infamous “Marriage Imperative” ideology, which has been behind many of these extreme policies. The “Marriage Imperative” ideology circulated around the time that legalizing same-sex marriage in the US was being discussed (2014), and it advocated for the maintenance of the right-wing’s idea of the nuclear family. The imperative suggested that liberals were responsible for the suffering of low-income families by no longer pushing for two-parent, “traditional” heterosexual homes, claiming that this created more single parents and children born out-of-wedlock. The ideology was rife with racist, homophobic, and misogynistic sentiments.

This marriage imperative ideology also put forth that the breakdown of “traditional” nuclear families was the reason that certain groups of people of color, namely the Black and Latinx communities, were experiencing a lack of “upward mobility” in society. It neglected to mention systemic barriers that the Black and Latinx communities face and instead blamed feminists, the LGBTQ+ community, and liberals for high divorce rates in the U.S. The ideology advocated for fewer funds to be allocated to social safety-net programs such as housing for the homeless, domestic violence programs, after-school daycare programs, and governmental assistance for single parents. It stated that, instead, the government should be allocating its funds to keeping two-parent, heterosexual marriages together, pushing marriage-promotion programs, and working to reduce divorce rates.

While the marriage imperative ideology claimed to support low-income families and people of color in the U.S., it not only worked against women who were escaping abusive situations but also discriminated against LGBTQ+ people who were, at the time the imperative’s foundational article was written, not allowed to marry. This imperative attempted to work against both liberation movements and is just one example of why movements must unite to equitably pursue social justice for all.

Reproductive Justice and Incarcerated Women

For reproductive justice advocates, incarceration is a critical issue. It puts women’s health and right to motherhood in danger while simultaneously taking a disproportionate toll on poor women and women of color. In addition to the egregious conditions faced behind prison walls (restricted access to abortion, subpar prenatal care, miscarriage not treated as a medical emergency, lack of Pap tests or treatment for ovarian cysts, shackling during labor and childbirth), most imprisoned women are mothers, and maintaining contact with their children while incarcerated is extremely difficult.

Additionally, the presence of a criminal record makes it very difficult to parent children because they are no longer eligible for public housing, food stamps, student loans, or jobs if convicted of a felony. This regularly leads to women not being able to regain custody of their children. Additionally, they do not have the right to vote to change the very policies that affect them. The author also mentions that, by allocating public funds to incarceration, funds are drained from social programs that would foster reproductive justice, such as universal health care, substance abuse treatment, education, child care, and public works.