Reproductive Justice Quotes

Is having a child actually fundamentally bettering the world as a whole in any way? There is no shortage of children. Wouldn’t it be better to let people who want children have them, and leave everyone else alone?

You’re not really mad that I’m not having children. In fact, I would probably love to one day. You’re mad that I’m expressing autonomy of choice. You’re mad that I’m considering other options. You’re mad that I don’t view that as my ultimate potential. You’re mad that I dare be selfish enough to make choices based on my best interest, something women are not supposed to do. You’re mad that I consider it a choice, and that I, a woman, am exercising choice. You’re not mad that I’m not having babies. You’re mad because I’m acting like a man.

Why does anyone think that men who cannot say the word period and do not know that the vagina and the stomach are not connected are competent and trustworthy leaders?

Don't sit around and wait for the perfect opportunity to come along —find something and make it an opportunity.

If the Constitution doesn’t say anything about a woman’s right to abortion, I’m damn sure it doesn’t say anything about the rights of the unborn.

Activism” is not just what we see on the streets or on the Internet or in the news; sometimes, “activism” is the simple act of doggedly, determinedly surviving.

What other movement has ensured that young women have the rights that they have today? Feminism is responsable not only for the decline in violence against women over the last decade, but also for equal pay and rights legislation, reproductive justice, and the list goes on. So I'm more than a little suspicious of those who see women's advancement as a bad thing.

A woman cannot have real autonomy unless she has reproductive autonomy. My hope is that one day both Church and society will embrace this justice issue. —Donna Quinn

every mother deserves reproductive justice. How a society treats pregnant women is a metaphor for how a society raises its children. Every year, about seven hundred American women die from pregnancy, the highest maternal mortality rate among rich countries in the world. Two-thirds of the annual deaths from pregnancy are considered preventable.

confronting Sanger’s white feminism enables us to move away from the reproductive choice movement, of which she is the founder and remains its leading hero, and toward the reproductive justice movement.

Moving beyond merely responding to partner violence and sexual assault, this more expansive approach led to the inclusion of immigrant rights, Indigenous treaty rights, and reproductive justice, as well as the violence of incarceration and militarism.

Females – sows and cows and hens and women – suffer because of their sex in Western patriarchal cultures, where female bodies are exploited as sex symbols, for reproduction, for breast milk, and/or for reproductive eggs. As such, farmed animals are at the very bottom of the contemporary, Western hierarchy of beings – and this is speceisism.

Women and other animals are exploited for their reproductive abilities, and both are devalued as they age and wear out – when they are no longer able to reproduce.

Social policy that is coercive is the beginning of a police state.

There wasn’t any justice for little Black girls, and never had been.

Since the family is the irreducible core unit of cities or any other political order, one may say the same thing of marriage: it was established to render justice, to give each his due—in this case, what is due between husband and wife in the inimitably unique relationship that they form. Owing to the exceptional complementarity and procreative potential of a husband and a wife, the legal form for their relationship is likewise distinctive, and not replicable for other relationships that are neither complementary nor potentially reproductive.

In the days of slavery, the moral reasoning went something like this: Black slaves are not fully human but are the powerless, voiceless property of powerful slave owners to dispose of as they choose. Call it “property justice,” if you will. The moral reasoning for abortion is identical. In “reproductive justice,” the unborn are not fully human but rather are the powerless, voiceless property of mothers. According to the Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice, women have the right to exercise their “personal bodily autonomy” by disposing of their unborn as they see fit.

When feminist rhetoric is rooted biases like racism, ableism, transmisogyny, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia, it automatically works against marginalized women and against any concept of solidarity. It's not enough to know that other women with different experiences exist' you must also understand that they have their own femiminist formed by that experience. Whether it's an argument that women who wear the hijab must be "saved" from it, or reproductive-justice arguments that paint having a disabled baby as the worst possible outcome, the reality is that feminism can be marginalizing

Imagine this: A world where the quality of your life is not determined by how much money you have. You do not have to sell your labour to survive. Labour is not tied to capitalism, profit or wage. Borders do not exist; we are free to move without consequence. The nuclear family does not exist; children are raised collectively; reproduction takes on new meanings. In this world, the way we carry out dull domestic labour is transformed and nobody is forced to rely on their partner economically to survive. The principles of transformative justice are used to rectify harm. Critical and comprehensive sex education exists for all from an early age. We are liberated from the gender binary’s strangling grip and the demands it places on our bodies. Sex work does not exist because work does not exist. Education and transport are free, from cradle to grave. We are forced to reckon with and rectify histories of imperialism, colonial exploitation, and warfare collectively. We have freedom to, not just freedom from. Specialist mental health services and community care are integral to our societies. There is no “state” as we know it; nobody dies in “suspicious circumstances” at its hands; no person has to navigate sexism, racism, ableism or homophobia to survive. Detention centres do not exist. Prisons do not exist, nor do the police. The military and their weapons are disbanded across nations. Resources are reorganised to adequately address climate catastrophe. No person is without a home or loving community. We love one another, without possession or exploitation or extraction. We all have enough to eat well due to redistribution of wealth and resource. We all have the means and the environment to make art, if we so wish. All cultural gatekeepers are destroyed. Now imagine this vision not as utopian, but as something well within our reach.

Most women feel isolated, with few policies or governmental programs to support motherhood (particularly working motherhood), and few if any systems in place to address maternal mental health. "We've lost any sense of power around our bodies," Joseph told me. We often talk about choice as if it is the be-all and end-all, as if it is something possessed by certain women and not others, as if it is a simple solution, when all of our choices exist within a warped system that denies both maternal power and maternal vulnerability. "Reproductive freeodom," Roberts writes, "is a matter of reproductive justice, not individual choice.

The way to get people to find common ground on reproductive rights, climate change, and criminal justice is not necessarily to talk first and hear everyone’s arguments. Instead, it’s to establish relationships between those who disagree—relationships where people meet first as fellow human beings, not as political positions.

To express Choice, Agency, or Control over my own reproductive choices is Not My Place, it is Selfish, it makes me Inferior, it makes me Incomplete, it makes me Un-Woman. By this logic, to exercise choice over my own reproduction is un-woman. To choose self over reproduction is un-woman. To exercise the agency of Self is to violate social norms of womanhood. Women do not exist to do things for themselves. Women have a social duty to be incubators, regardless of person.

And please, whatever you do, don’t tell us that what we do, either in love or lust, is unnatural. For one thing if what you mean by that is that animals don’t do it, then you are quite simply in factual error. There are plenty of activities or qualities we could list that are most certainly unnatural if you are so mad as to think that humans are not part of nature, or so dull-witted as to believe that ‘natural’ means ‘all natures but human nature’: mercy, for example, is un¬natural, an altruistic, non-selfish care and love for other species is unnatural; charity is unnatural, justice is unnatural, virtue is unnatural, indeed — and this surely is the point — the idea of virtue is unnatural, within such a foolish, useless meaning of the word ‘natural’. Animals, poor things, eat in order to survive: we, lucky things, do that too, but we also have Abbey Crunch biscuits, Armagnac, selle d’agneau, tortilla chips, sauce béarnaise, Vimto, hot buttered crumpets, Chateau Margaux, ginger-snaps, risotto nero and peanut-butter sandwiches — these things have nothing to do with survival and everything to do with pleasure, connoisseurship and plain old greed. Animals, poor things, copulate in order to reproduce: we, lucky things, do that too, but we also have kinky boots, wank-mags, leather thongs, peep-shows, statuettes by Degas, bedshows, Tom of Finland, escort agencies and the Journals of Anaïs Nin — these things have nothing to do with reproduction and everything to do with pleasure, connoisseurship and plain old lust. We humans have opened up a wide choice of literal and metaphorical haute cuisine and junk food in many areas of our lives, and as a punishment, for daring to eat the fruit of every tree in the garden, we were expelled from the Eden the animals still inhabit and we were sent away with the two great Jewish afflictions to bear as our penance: indigestion and guilt.

Compassion for human hurt, a humble sense of our impermanence, an absolute valuation of justice—all of our so-called virtues only trouble us and serve to bolster, not assuage, horror. In addition, these qualities are our least vital, the least in line with life. More often than not, they stand in the way of one’s rise in the welter of this world, which found its pace long ago and has not deviated from it since. The putative affirmations of life—each of them based on the propaganda of Tomorrow: reproduction, revolution in its widest sense, piety in any form you can name—are only affirmations of our desires. And, in fact, these affirmations affirm nothing but our penchant for self-torment, our mania to preserve a demented innocence in the face of gruesome facts. By means of supernatural horror we may evade, if momentarily, the horrific reprisals of affirmation. Every one of us, having been stolen from nonexistence, opens his eyes on the world and looks down the road at a few convulsions and a final obliteration. What a weird scenario. So why affirm anything, why make a pathetic virtue of a terrible necessity? We are destined to a fool’s fate that deserves to be mocked. And since there is no one else around to do the mocking, we will take on the job. So let us indulge in cruel pleasures against ourselves and our pretensions, let us delight in the Cosmic Macabre. At least we may send up a few bitter laughs into the cobwebbed corners of this crusty old universe.

If you look at all the variables in nature that are said to determine human “sex,” you can’t possibly find one that will unequivocally split the species into two. Each of the so-called criteria of sexedness is itself a continuum—including chromosomal variables, genital and gonadal variations, reproductive capacities, endocrinological proportions, and any other criterion you could think of. Any or all of these different variables may line up in any number of ways, and all of the variables may vary independently of one another.

People tend to refer to nonhuman animals as “it” or sometimes “he,” regardless of the individual’s sex. This one-sex-fits-all approach objectifies and denies individuality. In fact, nonhuman animals who are exploited for food industries are usually females. Such unfortunate nonhumans are not only exploited for their flesh, but also for their nursing milk, reproductive eggs, and ability to produce young. When guessing the gender of a nonhuman animal forced through slaughterhouse gates, we would greatly increase odds of being correct if we referred to such unfortunate individuals as “she.

Justice requires that all human beings irrespective of race or color, but also irrespective of age, or size, or stage of development, be afforded the protection of the laws. The common good requires that the laws reflect and promote a sound understanding of marriage as uniting one man and one woman in a bond founded on the bodily communion made possible by their reproductive complementarity.

La vie apparut et se distribua à la conquête de la Terre. Le temps s'attaquait à l'espace. Ce fut la complication. Les êtres se ramifièrent, se spécialisèrent, d'éloignèrent les uns des autres, chacun assurant sa perpétuation par la dévoration des autres. L'Evolution inventa des formes raffinées de prédation, de reproduction et de déplacement. Traquer, piéger, tuer, se reproduire fut le motif général. [...] Le soleil avait déjà pris feu. Il fécondait la tuerie de ses propres photons et il mourrait en s'offrant. La vie était le nom donné au massacre en même temps que le requiem du soleil. Si un Dieu était vraiment à l'origine de ce carnaval, il aurait fallu un tribunal de plus haute instance pour le traduire en justice. Hier, l'homme apparut, champignon à foyer multiple. Son cortex lui donna une disposition inédite: porter au plus haut degré la capacité de détruire ce qui n'était pas lui-même tout en se lamentant d'en être capable. A la douleur s'ajoutait la lucidité. L'horreur parfaite.

Black: fertility, protection against malevolent forces, healing of chronic illnesses • Blue: peace, tranquility, protection, healing of addictions, psychic and emotional pain • Brown: justice, legal issues, healing fatigue and wasting illnesses • Green: growth, prosperity, abundance, employment, physical healing, especially cancer • Purple: sex, power, lust, spiritual growth and ecstasy • Red: luck, love, good fortune, fertility, banishment of negative entities, protection, healing blood ailments and female reproductive disorders • Pink: love, romance, requests for healing children • White: creativity, forgiveness, new projects* • Yellow: romance, love, sex, growth, prosperity, good fortune, abundance (See also: Maximon.)

The debate among feminists about pregnancy benefits has had dramatic implications for the legal status of the right to choose abortion itself. As Ginsburg noted in a 1986 article, “The characterization of pregnancy discrimination as sex discrimination, requires the comparative analysis of the equal protection model. Its emphasis is on what is not unique about the reproductive process of women.” By contrast, the difference that feminists focus on is what is unique about childbirth. They advocate special treatment for pregnant women based on their premise that men and women are not “similarly situated” because of their reproductive differences. This was the same premise that Justice Stewart had invoked in his 1974 holding that discrimination against pregnant women is permissible. That’s why Ginsburg’s insistence that discrimination on the basis of pregnancy is a form of discrimination on the basis of sex is so central to her search for alternatives to the right to privacy, which does not appear explicitly in the Constitution, as a firm legal basis for protecting women’s reproductive rights. Ginsburg has been far more willing to enforce privacy rights for women when they can be tied to the text of the Constitution, such as the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Through the reformatory movement then, the criminal justice system became a mechanism used to punish women who did not perform social reproductive labour according to the white, bourgeois ideal. This ideal was reinforced in the reformatories where women were taught to perform domestic tasks such as laundry and needlework. This training in domestic labour served a dual function. On the one hand, it trained working-class women in the ‘cult of domesticity’. On the other, it served to produce a labour force of domestic servants since women were often released from reformatories into bourgeois homes where they worked for below-average wages. In other words, both reflecting and reproducing the relations of the gendered capitalist labour market more broadly, while imprisoned men were performing industrial labour, women in the reformatories were being trained in domestic labour which they were expected to perform either for no wages in a patriarchal household or for low wages in the labour market.

RBG’s image as a moderate was clinched in March 1993, in a speech she gave at New York University known as the Madison Lecture. Sweeping judicial opinions, she told the audience, packed with many of her old New York friends, were counterproductive. Popular movements and legislatures had to first spur social change, or else there would be a backlash to the courts stepping in. As case in point, RBG chose an opinion that was very personal to plenty of people listening: Roe v. Wade. The right had been aiming to overturn Roe for decades, and they’d gotten very close only months before the speech with Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, and Sandra Day O’Connor had instead brokered a compromise, allowing states to put restrictions on abortion as long as they didn’t pose an “undue burden” on women—or ban it before viability. Neither side was thrilled, but Roe was safe, at least for the moment. Just as feminists had caught their breath, RBG declared that Roe itself was the problem. If only the court had acted more slowly, RBG said, and cut down one state law at a time the way she had gotten them to do with the jury and benefit cases. The justices could have been persuaded to build an architecture of women’s equality that could house reproductive freedom. She said the very boldness of Roe, striking down all abortion bans until viability, had “halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believe, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue.” This analysis remains controversial among historians, who say the political process of abortion access had stalled before Roe. Meanwhile, the record shows that there was no overnight eruption after Roe. In 1975, two years after the decision, no senator asked Supreme Court nominee John Paul Stevens about abortion. But Republicans, some of whom had been pro-choice, soon learned that being the anti-abortion party promised gains. And even if the court had taken another path, women’s sexual liberation and autonomy might have still been profoundly unsettling. Still, RBG stuck to her guns, in the firm belief that lasting change is incremental. For the feminists and lawyers listening to her Madison Lecture, RBG’s argument felt like a betrayal. At dinner after the lecture, Burt Neuborne remembers, other feminists tore into their old friend. “They felt that Roe was so precarious, they were worried such an expression from Ruth would lead to it being overturned,” he recalls. Not long afterward, when New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan suggested to Clinton that RBG be elevated to the Supreme Court, the president responded, “The women are against her.” Ultimately, Erwin Griswold’s speech, with its comparison to Thurgood Marshall, helped convince Clinton otherwise. It was almost enough for RBG to forgive Griswold for everything else.

If only the court had acted more slowly,’ RBG said, and cut down one state law at a time the way she had gotten them to do with the jury and benefit cases. The justices could have been persuaded to build an architecture of women’s equality that could house reproductive freedom. She said the very boldness of Roe, striking down all abortion bans until viability, had ‘halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believe, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue. (85).

Although white women as a group lost the most in welfare reform, they got the one bone that's always been thrown to white working- and middle-class people in the United States: the opportunity to feel they were morally superior to people of color.

The irony is that only by a particularly narrow definition does a Walmart job get you off welfare - as a matter of policy, Walmart encourages its employees to apply for government benefits. Indeed, Walmart and other minimum wage workers at McDonald's and similar McJobs are the largest group of Medicaid and food stamps recipients in the United States. That is to say, US taxpayers subsidize Walmart paychecks (and corporate profits) by paying welfare benefits to its workers and their children. Welfare reform eliminated virtually all education and job-training benefits beyond "work readiness" classes that taught women to dress nicely and get their kids up early. The result: women couldn't get the education to get a good job and they were still receiving welfare benefits, but they could be counted on to clock regular hours and make profits for their low-paying employers. From welfare reform to Walmart, it was all reproductive politics.

Teen pregnancy is not in itself a problem, although it is a marker of a problem in a society where good jobs are distributed almost exclusively to people who go through a long period of higher education. When girls believe, correctly, that neither they nor their children would be better off if they waited until their twenties to have their children, it means their opportunities are slim indeed. And that - rather than worries about sexually active girls - should trouble us a great deal.

The primary reason that U.S. infant mortality is so high compared to other countries is that African Americans suffer a staggering rate. If Black America were its own country, it would be ranked between China and Turkey.

It is important to say that the explosion of immigrant nanny and household work was not an inevitable or even direct consequence of feminism in the United States. On the contrary, it was the endpoint of a long series of refusals on the part of government and business to meet the demands of the women's movement.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a fellow progressive, explained that the state had the ability to restrict reproduction of those with Down syndrome, since “It would be strange if [the public welfare] could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence.”7 Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, called for the sterilization or quarantining of some “fifteen or twenty millions of our populations” in order to prevent the supposed poisoning of the gene pool.8

From the Glossary of Jargon: “Racism/ n: the refusal to judge people on the basis of their race (archaic: judging people on the basis of race).” “Reproductive justice/ n: infanticide.” “Reproductive rights/ n: the contrived right to stop reproduction.” “Riot/ n: a mostly peaceful protest.” “Social justice/ n: getting what one does not deserve because one is a member of a favored group.” “Socialism/ n: an inhuman ideology based on a false anthropology that has bred misery wherever tried but which, its supporters insist, will turn out better next time.” “Systemic racism/ n: the refusal to grant special treatment to people on the basis of race.” “Woman/ n: a person who may or may not be a man.

The ongoing appropriation and development of possibilities emerging from events are actualized through repetition. Repetition is distinct from reproduction in that it does not seek an impossible return to initial conditions, nor does it require the exact temporal and spatial coordinates or materiality. Reproduction establishes a sameness, whereas repetition introduces a critical difference. The gift exemplifies repetition.19 Gifts are unanticipated, indetermined, arrive with an irrevocable facticity, and are unreproducible. Failing to adhere to these characteristics degrades the gift to an object and gift-giving to an economic exchange. The gift is always in a state of precarity, facing a constant risk of degradation. Upon arriving, I assume the identity of the owner, effacing the trace of its gift character. Coming into my possession, the gift acquires a specific value and, according to justice, belongs to no one else apart from an equitable price. Now “the gift” resides within the economy, circulating from hand to hand as specified by market forces. Here reproduction is possible, not as the original gift, but in its deficient mode of appearing as the object. Whereas reproduction necessitates ownership, repetition requires suspending possession for the gift to appear again. The repetition of the gift dispossesses me of the object by reenacting the original giving act. In this sense, repetition does not repeat the gift in a material form, nor does it necessarily include the same actors. Instead, it repeats the act that gave rise to the gift. To receive a gift as a gift requires that it not be possessed but be returned to the originating current of the giving act. Repetition facilitates a continuation of this current, flowing through a history of respective receivers-who-become-givers. As such, one does not so much receive the gift but instead welcomes the act of giving through repetition, introducing a redundancy [redondance] between receiving and giving, marking a singular act extended through time. Traditions are born from this redundancy and die in assuming this inheritance as a possession.

Reproductive Justice - a phrase coined by black feminists at a conference in 1994, remains illusive for African American women, who struggle to access affordable healthcare due to social and economic inequalities. The abortion rate for black women is nearly 5 times that for white women. African American women are 3-4 times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. Furthermore, health conditions that disproportionately affect black women, such as uterine fibroids, receive very little government research funding. My hope is this novel will provoke discussions about culpability in a society that still deems poor, black, and disabled as categories unfit for motherhood.

these creatures grow up with a peculiar knowledge. They know that they have been born in an infinite variety. They know, for instance, that in their genetic material they are born with hundreds of different chromosome formations at the point in each cell that we would say determines their "sex". These creatures don't just come in XX or XY; they also come in XXY and XYY and XXX plus a long list of "mosaic" variations in which some cells in a creature's body have one combination and other cells have another. Some of these creatures are born with chromosomes that aren't even quite X or Y because a little bit of one chromosome goes and gets joined to another. There are hundreds of different combinations, and though all are not fertile, quite a number of them are. The creatures in this world enjoy their individuality; they delight in the fact that they are not divisible into distinct categories. So when another newborn arrives with an esoterically rare chromosomal formation, there is a little celebration: "Aha," they say, "another sign that we are each unique." These creatures also live with the knowledge that they are born with a vast range of genital formations. Between their legs are tissue structures that vary along a continuum, from clitorises with a vulva through all possible combinations and gradations to penises with scrotal sac. These creatures live with an understanding that their genitals all developed prenatally from exactly the same little nub of embryonic tissue called a genital tubercle, which grew and developed under the influence of varying amounts of the hormone androgen. These creatures honor and respect everyone's natural-born genitalia –including what we would describe as a microphallus or a clitoris several inches long. What these creatures find amazing and precious is that because everyone's genitals stem from th same embryonic tissue, the nerves inside all their genitals got wired very much alike, so these nerves of touch just go crazy upon contact in a way that resonates completely between them. "My gosh," they think, "you must feel something in your genital tubercle that intensely resembles what I'm feeling in my genital tubercle." Well, they don't think that in so many words; they're actually quite heavy into their feelings at that point; but they do feel very connected –throughout all their wondrous variety. I could go on. I could tell you about the variety of hormones that course through their bodies in countless different patterns and proportions, both before birth and throughout their lives –the hormones that we call "sex hormones" but that they call "individuality inducers." I could tell you how these creatures think about reproduction: For part of their lives, some of these creatures are quite capable of gestation, delivery, and lactation; and for part of their lives, some of them are quite capable of insemination; and for part or all of their lives, some of them are not capable of any of those things – so these creatures conclude that it would be silly to lock anyone into a lifelong category based on a capability variable that may or may not be utilized and that in any case changes over each lifetime in a fairly uncertain and idiosyncratic way. These creatures are not oblivious to reproduction; but nor do they spend their lives constructing a self-definition around their variable reproductive capacities. They don't have to, because what is truly unique about those creatures is that they are capable of having a sense of personal identity without struggling to fit into a group identity based on how they were born. These creatures are quite happy, actually. They don't worry about sorting /other/ creatures into categories, so they don't have to worry about whether they are measuring up to some category they themselves are supposed to belong to.

Reproductive justice, a phrase coined by Black feminists at a conference in 1994, remains elusive for African American women who struggle to access affordable health care due to social and economic inequalities. The abortion rate for Black women is nearly five times that for white women. African American women are three to four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. Furthermore, health conditions that disproportionately affect Black women, such as uterine fibroids, receive very little government research funding. My hope is that this novel will provoke discussions about culpability in a society that still deems poor, Black, and disabled as categories unfit for motherhood.

In a magazine article that took the form of a personal and political diary, journalist and Redstockings founder Ellen Willis chronicled her reaction to the defeat of the Blumenthal bill. "The abortion reform bill is unexpectedly killed," she wrote in an urgent present tense. "The bill was a farce, but that only makes the Assembly's action more shocking and disgusting. Key man in this spirited affirmation of the compulsory pregnancy system is Assemblyman Martin Ginsberg." She added "My first reaction is simply that I want to kill him. A man who is more concerned about his own hypothetical death than about the real deaths of thousands of women is unsalvageable. [Anti-colonial theorist Frantz] Fanon says that an oppressed individual cannot feel liberated until he kills one of his oppressors. Women? Killing? The idea seems ludicrous. But the anger is there, and it's real, and it will be expressed. We have begun and we can't go back.

Whenever I raised the subject of abortion, Mom would say with what I remember as clenched fists and a flushed face: "You don't understand, Felicia! They" - the illegal abortionists - "were butchers! Butchers!

On occasions too numerous to catalog, she interrupted conversations about health care with a warning to "never go to a Catholic hospital! All they care about is the fetus," she railed, "never the mother!" She would say this if my sisters, each of whom has two children, were talking about birthing options. And she would say it if any of us mentioned appendectomy or setting a fractured bone: in my mother's understanding, what she believed was a preference for fetuses over adult women signaled a general lack of trustworthiness, perhaps to the point of medical incompetence.

Free Abortion on Demand Without Apology: Reproductive Justice in a Post-Roe America paints a vivid picture of a country that is actively harming its citizens by taking away their reproductive rights, their bodily autonomy, and their right to choose parenthood.

People also tend to refer to nonhuman animals as “it” or sometimes “he,” regardless of the individual’s sex. This one-sex-fits-all approach objectifies and denies individuality. In fact, nonhuman animals who are exploited for food industries are usually females. Such unfortunate nonhumans are not only exploited for their flesh, but also for their nursing milk, reproductive eggs, and ability to produce young. When guessing the gender of a nonhuman animal forced through slaughterhouse gates, we would greatly increase odds of being correct if we referred to such unfortunate individuals as “she.

People also tend to refer to nonhuman animals as “it” or sometimes “he,” regardless of the individual’s sex. This one-sex-fits-all approach objectifies and denies individuality. In fact, nonhuman animals who are exploited for food industries are usually females. Such unfortunate nonhumans are not only exploited for their flesh, but also for their nursing milk, reproductive eggs, and ability to produce young. When guessing the gender of a nonhuman animal forced through slaughterhouse gates, we would greatly increase odds of being correct if we referred to such unfortunate individuals as 'she'.

Every indignity that comes from the denial of reproductive autonomy can be found in slave women’s lives – the harms of treating women’s wombs as procreative vessels, of policies that pit a mother’s welfare against that of her unborn child, and of government attempts to manipulate women’s child-bearing decisions through threats and bribes.

The “rise of the doula” is present in reproductive justice everywhere.

Reproductive justice looks not only at the right one has to an abortion but also one’s right to have a child and to parent that child.

We were compelled to do this work because we wanted to see and feel the changes we were trying to create. The reproductive justice movement was home to us,

Often, the feminist movement of the 1960s is associated with a reproductive rights framework—the right to choose when, how, and with whom someone has children. Reproductive justice takes that movement further, bringing together intersections of identity to form a definition of social justice hinged on lived experiences—especially lived experiences of women of color.

The reproductive justice movement promotes the idea that, in a lifetime, a person might experience the full spectrum of reproductive health decisions, that these decisions are linked to other intersecting factors in their life, and that any decision made should be respected and protected.

• Black: fertility, protection against malevolent forces, healing of chronic illnesses • Blue: peace, tranquility, protection, healing of addictions, psychic and emotional pain • Brown: justice, legal issues, healing fatigue and wasting illnesses • Green: growth, prosperity, abundance, employment, physical healing, especially cancer • Purple: sex, power, lust, spiritual growth and ecstasy • Red: luck, love, good fortune, fertility, banishment of negative entities, protection, healing blood ailments and female reproductive disorders • Pink: love, romance, requests for healing children • White: creativity, forgiveness, new projects* • Yellow: romance, love, sex, growth, prosperity, good fortune, abundance

When reframed in this way, critics often accuse couples intent on pursuing ART of being selfish for expending so much time, energy, and resources to have a biological connection to their child when they could pursue adoption in-stead. But beyond the practical barrier of adoption not being accessible to all prospective parents in all contexts given variables of age, sexual orientation, marital status, and the pool of available children, what is missing in this anti-ART/pro-adoption position is an explanation for why the criticism of narcissism or selfishness is directed primarily at couples who use ART, not also at those intent on bearing children the old-fashioned way through intercourse. Why must those who cannot reproduce "naturally" be put in the position of having to justify their desire to have "their own" child — why isn't every prospective parent pressed to give an account?

By itself, legal abortion does little for poor and working-class women who have neither the means to pay for it nor access to clinics that provide it. Rather, reproductive justice requires free, universal, not-for-profit health care, as well as the end of racist, eugenicist practices in the medical profession.

Together, an LGBTQ+ coalition with class consciousness and anti-racism at its core must recover its radicalism and reaffirm its opposition to capitalism and patriarchy. Infighting and division are in the interests of our right-wing oppressors. Gay people and trans people have had to battle similar arguments about being "unnatural": homophobia still often rests on the prejudice that the worthiest form of sexuality is that which is capable of reproduction. Transphobia, too, emanates from prejudice that a person's stated identity is more trustworthy if it reflects their "natural" role in human reproduction. Similarly, cisgender women's reproductive freedom is the first thing to be curbed by conservative regimes. Misogyny, homophobia and transphobia share much of the same DNA. To the patriarchy, we all do gender wrong.