Laying the Foundations for a Reproductive Justice Movement
Birthing a Movement
In June 1994, twelve black women working in the reproductive health and rights movement gave birth to the concept of reproductive justice, creating a paradigm shift in what women of color termed their work to end reproductive oppression. Gathered for a conference in Chicago sponsored by the Illinois Pro-Choice Alliance and the Ms. Foundation for Women, the founding RJ mothers decided to draft a response to the Clinton administration’s Health Security Act proposed in 1993. This plan, largely orchestrated by Hillary Clinton, brought healthcare reform to the national stage ahead of the 1994 midterm elections, but the proposed two-tier system was already a lived reality for many poor women of color in the United States. We believed that true healthcare for women needed to include the full range of reproductive health services, including abortion. We were standing at the brink of a pivotal moment for organizing and mobilizing black women around a policy issue with the potential to profoundly change all our lives.
Seizing a Political Moment
While the Clinton administration was lobbying the public for support, women’s health advocates were simultaneously developing a women’s health agenda to address the shortfalls within Clinton’s proposal. A few of the founding mothers were connected with the Campaign for Women’s Health, a national coalition of organizations formed in 1990. The Campaign had put together a “comprehensive ‘model benefits package’ for women” that included “primary, preventive, reproductive, and long-term care services in addition to services for the treatment of illness or disease.”1
From the RJ founding mothers’ perspective, even women’s health advocates understated the unique concerns of those women most economically disadvantaged and facing some of the greatest health disparities. The black women at the conference decided to draft a statement offering recommendations to be included in any healthcare plan from the perspective of African American women, including coverage for abortions, contraceptives, well-woman preventive care, and pre- and postnatal care. We believed comprehensive healthcare for women of color and our families was a plan that, among other things, addressed those health issues that disproportionately affect women of color, such as fibroids, cervical and breast cancer, infant and maternal morbidity and mortality, intimate partner violence, and HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. In addition to focusing on wellness and prevention, any healthcare plan would also include a strong educational component regarding sex and sexuality. Most importantly, it needed to be affordable.
Not satisfied with just the statement from the conference, we strategized a much larger effort, one that would reflect the voices of black women around the country. We wanted to send a message to federal legislators that black women understood what was at stake and held law-makers responsible for making the right decisions on our behalf. Part of this strategy was to place a full-page signature ad in the Washington Post and Roll Call, a Washington, DC, newspaper covering Capitol Hill. Collectively, we raised the necessary funds from foundations, allies, and individual black women across the country. The Black Women’s Health Imperative (BWHI), then called the National Black Women’s Health Project (NBWHP), agreed to be our fiscal agent, keeping an accounting of all revenues and expenses. Cynthia Newbille—an RJ founding mother, former NBWHP executive director, and now Richmond City Council member—played a pivotal role in helping to raise the necessary funding for the signature ad.
There was still the question of exactly what we would name our collective effort because we represented multiple organizations and were not necessarily all authorized to speak for them. In Chicago, we decided on the name Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice (WADRJ). It was a name that spoke to the injustices of the current health system that denied women of color full services due to compounded issues of race, class, and gender. It also referenced that not all of us were African American, but from the African diaspora. We chose WADRJ because abortion access, while important, was but one of countless barriers to women and their families being healthy and living in healthy communities. Finally, the inclusion of “justice” in our name spoke to issues of fairness and the equitable distribution of resources. We recognized that “equality” within the context of rights oftentimes did not shift the imbalance of economic resources to favor the powerless, and that women of color, especially poor black women, were still disenfranchised. In simplest terms, we spliced together the concept of reproductive rights and social justice to coin the neologism “reproductive justice.”
Within two months, we collected the endorsements of 836 black women nationally, including Alice Walker, Angela Davis, and Veronica Webb. On August 16, 1994, WADRJ took out our ad. It was titled “Black Women on Health Care Reform” because media advisors in Washington felt that offered a clearer, more succinct description of who we were rather than the more complex WADRJ name we had devised in Chicago.
We sponsored a press conference on Capitol Hill on August 17, 1994. Congresswomen Eleanor Holmes Norton, Maxine Waters, Carrie Meek, Cynthia McKinney, and Eva Clayton gave remarks. RJ founding mothers “Able” Mable Thomas (now a Georgia state legislator) and Newbille spoke on behalf of WADRJ and NBWHP. The full statement from the Washington Post follows.
Black Women on Health Care Reform
Dear Members of Congress:
Black women have unique problems that must be addressed while you are debating health care reform legislation. Lack of access to treatment for diseases that primarily affect Black women and the inaccessibility of comprehensive preventive health care services are important issues that must be addressed under reform. We are particularly concerned about coverage for the full range of reproductive services under health care reform legislation.
Reproductive freedom is a life and death issue for many Black women and deserves as much recognition as any other freedom. The right to have an abortion is a personal decision that must be made by a woman in consultation with her physician. Accordingly, unimpeded access to abortion as a part of the full range of reproductive health services offered under health care reform, is essential. Moreover, abortion coverage must be provided for all women under health care reform regardless of ability to pay, with no interference from the government. WE WILL NOT ENDORSE A HEALTH CARE REFORM SYSTEM THAT DOES NOT COVER THE FULL RANGE OF REPRODUCTIVE SERVICES FOR ALL WOMEN INCLUDING ABORTION.
In addition to reproductive health services, health care reform must include:
Universal coverage and equal access to health services. Everyone must be covered under health care reform. To be truly universal, benefits must be provided regardless of income, health or employment status, age or location. It must be affordable for individuals and families, without deductibles and copayments. All people must be covered equally.
Comprehensiveness. The package must cover all needed health care services, including diagnostic, treatment, preventative, long-term care, mental health services, prescription drugs and pre-existing conditions. All reproductive health services must be covered and treated the same as other health services. This includes pap tests, mammograms, contraceptive methods, prenatal care, delivery, abortion, sterilization, infertility services, STDs and HIV/AIDS screening and treatment. Everyone must also be permitted to choose their own health care providers.
Protection from discrimination. The plan must include strong anti-discriminatory provisions to ensure the protection of all women of color, the elderly, the poor, and those with disabilities. In addition, the plan must not discriminate based on sexual orientation. To accomplish this goal, Black women must be represented on national, state, and local planning, review, and decision-making bodies.
We, the undersigned, are dedicated to ensuring that these items are covered under health care reform legislation. As your constituents, we believe that you have a responsibility to work for the best interests of those you represent, and we request that you work for passage of a bill that provides coverage for these services.
Sincerely,
836 Black Women
That same year, WADRJ partnered with the Women of Color Partnership Program of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice to republish the “We Remember” brochure from 1989, the first collective statement specifically in support of abortion rights by some of the most influential activist black women such as Dorothy Height (National Council of Negro Women), Byllye Avery (National Black Women’s Health Project), Maxine Waters (Black Women’s Forum), and Jewell Jackson McCabe (National Coalition of 100 Black Women), in addition to Civil Rights leaders like Rev. Willie Barrow (Operation PUSH) and Ramona Edelin (National Urban Coalition), and mainstream leaders like Faye Wattleton (Planned Parenthood) and C. Delores Tucker (Democratic National Committee Black Caucus). The original statement was also endorsed by other nationally recognized black women, including Marcia Ann Gillespie (Ms. magazine), Jacqui Gates (National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs), and the late Illinois congresswoman Cardiss Collins.
This landmark statement was in response to the US Supreme Court decision in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services to uphold a Missouri law that imposed restrictions on the use of state funds, facilities, and employees in performing, assisting with, or counseling on abortions. In Webster the Supreme Court allowed states to legislate in aspects previously thought to be forbidden under the original 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. Donna Brazile, working with the National Congress of Black Women (founded by Shirley Chisholm), organized a conference call for black women leaders to express outrage about the decision, including RJ founding mother Loretta J. Ross. They decided black women around the country needed to know about their historical support for reproductive freedom, first suggested by Byllye Avery. “We Remember” gave black women permission to speak out openly in support of abortion rights, something many had been reluctant to do.
The republished brochure included endorsements by twenty-nine additional black women, including the twelve RJ founding mothers.2 WADRJ issued two additional statements: a letter to former President Bill Clinton in support of Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, who was fired in December 1994 for her public support of the distribution of contraception in schools, teaching youth about masturbation, and drug legalization; and the second in support of Dr. David Satcher as Elders’s replacement.
After the successful ad campaign, some of us continued to think about and populate this intriguing new reproductive justice analysis. In September 1994, a month after the press conference, some of us attended the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, at which the global women’s health movement emphasized the ineluctable relationship between poverty, underdevelopment, and women’s reproduction. We joined with our sisters from the Global South in resisting those forces endorsing strategies of population control, and learned from our international sisters who used the human rights framework to make stronger claims for women’s full human rights that moved far beyond the limits of the US Constitution and the restrictive privacy framework.
No historical overview would be complete without placing reproductive justice within the context of a longer history of black women’s reproductive health and rights activism. While the Chicago conference and universal healthcare were the policy vehicles that brought us together, it was just one of a myriad of concerns in our individual social justice activism. Black women’s launching of the reproductive justice movement connects to the larger movement of women of color.
The Black Women’s Health Imperative: Pioneering the Women of Color Health Movement
Byllye Avery cofounded the BWHI in 1984 following the first National Conference on Black Women’s Health Issues in Atlanta in 1983. BWHI applied an intersectional lens to its body of work, recognizing that black women faced multiple forms of oppression such as race, class, gender, and poverty that affected their ability to lead healthy lives. Health educator Lillie Allen, also a BWHI cofounder, incorporated the components of dialogue and active listening she learned from a counseling technique called Re-evaluation Counseling to create BWHI’s self-help method. This engaged black women in a process of examining their personal circumstances and connecting them to the sociopolitical conditions that made it impossible to exercise reproductive autonomy and realize true reproductive freedom. The self-help model grounded BHWI’s work of building community among black women.
Other women of color who attended BWHI’s founding conference went on to establish their own organizations. In 1986 Luz Alvarez Martinez developed the National Latina Health Organization, and Charon Asetoyer organized the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center in 1988. Although Mary Luke was not at the BWHI conference, she organized Asian Pacific Islanders for Choice (now Forward Together) in 1989 after the Webster decision. Collectively, these organizations laid the foundation that would coalesce into the Sister-Song Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective in 1997 (now the SisterSong Reproductive Justice Collective).
BWHI combined its self-help approach with an advocacy and public policy strategy. The organization utilized several creative mechanisms to educate black women, including Vital Signs, a publication on health issues written by and for black women; On Becoming a Woman, a video featuring mothers and daughters talking about menstruation; annual conferences; and its “Black and Female” and “Sisters and Allies” retreats.
The first health center devoted to the health concerns of black women, the Center for Black Women’s Wellness (CBWW), was founded by BWHI in the Mechanicsville neighborhood of Atlanta. CBWW not only provided vital reproductive health services to low-income black women but it also made advocacy skills trainings available to them. CBWW also created “Plain Talk,” a program designed to educate teenagers about pregnancy and other reproductive health issues.
Internationally, BWHI was an important participant in the 1985 UN World Conference for Women in Nairobi, Kenya, introducing its membership to the global health issues confronting women around the world. In 1986 BWHI endorsed both the East and West Coast March for Women’s Lives, organized by the National Organization for Women in Washington, DC, and Los Angeles. BWHI played a critical role in building black women’s support for abortion rights, including organizing meetings in response to the Webster decision. Its 1990 conference, Sisters in Session about Our Reproductive Health, crafted a black women’s reproductive health agenda and organized the first face-to-face meeting of the signatories of the 1989 “We Remember” brochure. BWHI became the premier national advocate and expert on what it meant to authentically include black women’s concerns in the mainstream reproductive health movement.
Abortion: Legal for All and Out of Reach for Many
Although the 1994 conference that brought the RJ founding mothers together was about the pro-choice agenda, the movement that ultimately manifested was greater than even its founders had imagined. The RJ cocreators understood that abortion was far too important an issue in the lives of black women to be excluded in any healthcare reform plan, and to that end repealing the Hyde Amendment was a top priority for them. Spearheaded by Illinois Representative Henry Hyde and passed in 1976, the Hyde Amendment ended Medicaid funding of abortions, effectively targeting poor women, young women, Indigenous women, and women of color. It was an annual attachment to the appropriations bill for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (now the Department of Health and Human Services).3 Although reproductive rights activists successfully obtained an injunction, it was lifted and the amendment was implemented in August 1977. Activists have made strides to chip away at the Hyde Amendment by expanding Medicaid access to abortion services for rape and incest survivors and to save the life of the mother, yet a full victory has not been won.
One of BWHI’s most important policy initiatives was its 1994 Campaign for Abortion and Reproductive Equity (C.A.R.E.). Led by women’s health activist Leslie Watson Malachi, the goal of C.A.R.E was to build a broad-based coalition to pressure Congress to repeal the Hyde Amendment. The campaign was extremely successful in galvanizing black women around this insidious legislation that unfairly impacted many of their own lives. Several years later, reproductive rights activists would resume the BWHI’s effort to repeal the Hyde Amendment. This included the National Network of Abortion Funds’ (NNAF) Campaign for Access and Reproductive Equity from 2000–2002 and Hyde—30 Years Is Enough! which ran from 2006–2008. The most recent effort is a collaboration of national and grassroots organizations working under the banner of All*Above All, including the NNAF and BWHI, continuing its legacy of ensuring that the voices and concerns of women of color are central in public policy issues.
The Original Intent of Reproductive Justice
A prevailing misperception is that black women were seeking to replace the abortion-focused pro-choice or reproductive rights frameworks based on the US Constitution with reproductive justice, which instead is based on the global human rights framework. Rather, our focus was on centering black women within the debate, moving our voices from the margins to the center of the discourse. There was and remains a level of intentionality behind the reproductive justice framework that recognizes women of color as the experts of our own lives. We connect personal experiences with the political reality of efforts to control the fertility of women of color through punitive legislation, dramatically affecting our ability to be self-determining about our bodies, and ultimately, our families and communities.
Reproductive justice never meant to replace the reproductive health or rights frameworks. This assumption promotes the myth that women of color are incapable of formulating theoretical analyses to successfully break the historical bonds over our embodied flesh. Instead, RJ was an intentional effort to shed light on the combined forms of oppression that threaten our bodily integrity and autonomy. The founding mothers, and the women of color who have broadened the framework over the years, invested in creating a meaningful paradigm centering the lived experiences of women of color, and formulated practical strategies of resistance leading to our liberation.
The Evolution of Reproductive Justice
While we had already put reproductive justice in practice for our advocacy work on healthcare reform, we needed to establish a theoretical base to explore the viability of RJ for building a movement of radical women of color and our allies. The year 1994 was significant for several other reasons. Three people were killed at abortion clinics that year; Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa; O.J. Simpson was arrested for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson; and, amid this news, the International Conference on Population and Development was held in Cairo. These events informed the development and growth of the RJ framework.
For the next several years, the concept of reproductive justice marinated in the hearts and minds of its originators but was never forgotten. I launched African American Women Evolving in Chicago in 1996, later renamed Black Women for Reproductive Justice. SisterSong organized in 1997 under the leadership of Luz Rodriguez. Many of the women of color health organizations founded in the 1980s and 1990s became SisterSong cofounding members. In 2004 the first book on reproductive justice, Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice, was published and proved invaluable while writing this essay.
In the first six years, the SisterSong members prioritized their sustainability. In 2003 SisterSong organized its first national conference, inviting other women of color and white allies to build a concerted movement. The conference offered a plenary panel and workshops on the efficacy of the reproductive justice framework to challenge speakers to address these questions: What is reproductive justice? Could it serve as a new way for women of color to address reproductive oppression? Could it be used to build a more cohesive movement by and for women of color to address reproductive politics in the United States?
These questions launched what some might call the “proof of concept” phase of RJ. These inquiries became critical in terms of establishing reproductive justice as a theoretical and analytical framework, as well as an organizing practice. The questions explored at the conference came about because women of color were frustrated with the limitations of the privacy-based pro-choice movement that did not fully incorporate the experiences of women of color, and the failure of the pro-choice movement to understand the impact of white supremacist thinking on the lives of communities of color.
SisterSong was privileged to have in the plenary and workshops on reproductive justice great scholars and activists, including Dorothy Roberts, Jael Silliman, Byllye Avery, Malika Saada Saar, Rosalinda Palacios, Adriane Fugh-Berman, Eveline Shen, Barbara Smith, and Jatrice Gaithers. After receiving validation from the six hundred women at our first national conference, SisterSong decided to promote RJ as our central organizing strategy for work in the United States because it emerged as a unifying and popular framework among our base of women of color and Indigenous women. This was the national debut of the concept of reproductive justice as a strategy for building a movement of Indigenous women and women of color, not only to fight against reproductive oppression, but to offer a vision of what a society built on human rights and justice could look like.
SisterSong worked with its member organizations—Asian Pacific Islanders for Reproductive Health (APIRH), led by Eveline Shen, and the Abortion Access Project, led by Susan Yanow—to develop trainings for women of color on how to use the RJ framework. When APIRH renamed itself Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice (ACRJ) in 2004, it became the first SisterSong member organization to rebrand itself using the phrase “reproductive justice.” In addition, Sujatha Jesudason, then working for ACRJ, deepened the original theoretical analysis in 2005 by coauthoring a manifesto, “A New Vision for Advancing Our Movement for Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, and Reproductive Justice,” that distinguished between reproductive health (service delivery), reproductive rights (abortion advocacy), and reproductive justice (movement building). Soon other organizations used RJ in their names. African American Women Evolving became Black Women for Reproductive Justice, and California Latinas for Reproductive Justice was founded in Los Angeles. Several foundations, notably the Tides Foundation, created reproductive justice portfolios. Tides eventually launched the Groundswell Fund, under the leadership of Vanessa Daniels, to specifically fund reproductive justice activism around the country, both among women of color and mainstream groups.
While RJ was never originally intended to displace “choice” as a competing framework, it had that salubrious effect, particularly after the organizers of the 2004 March for Women’s Lives changed its name from March for Freedom of Choice. The march drew more than 1.15 million participants, making it one of the largest protests in US history at that time. Within a short decade, reproductive justice began to challenge the pro-choice/pro-life logjam in capturing the imaginations of radical women of color and white women who wanted to revolutionize reproductive politics in the United States.
In November 2014, SisterSong celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the reproductive justice framework with a gathering in the founding city of Chicago. The previous two decades had proven the viability of the RJ framework and its success in laying a foundation for a new movement for human rights in the US and globally.
Notes
1. Carol Weisman, Women’s Health Care: Activist Traditions and Institutional Change (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 211.
2. The text of the 1994 reissued brochure can be found online at https://www.trustblackwomen.org/2011-05-10-03-28-12/publications-a-articles/african-americans-and-abortion-articles/36-african-american-women-are-for-reproductive-freedom.
3. For an overview and history of the Hyde Amendment, see The Center for American Progress’ five-part series The Hyde Amendment. Jessica Arons, et al., The Hyde Amendment: 30 Years Is Enough, Center for American Progress, October 6, 2006, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/news/2006/10/05/2233/the-hyde-amendment-30-years-is-enough/.