A Culturally-Centered and Intersectional Approach to Reproductive Justice

On April 26, 2023, I had the pleasure of sharing some of the highlights of my upcoming book, A Culturally-Centered and Intersection Approach to Reproductive Justice: An Edited Collection. This book is co-edited by two Hofstra University Rhetoric & Public Advocacy and Rabinowitz Honors College alums, Sabrina Singh and Christina Mary Joseph. Much of the commonly understood history of reproductive justice movements has typically centered the experiences of white, cisgendered, and non-disabled women in the West. The less widely available information which includes women of color and women in the Global South tends to focus only on the abuses they have suffered without deeper interrogations into issues such as structures, barriers, or even agency. Globally, women of color are still more likely to face poverty and instability, which can pose a barrier to consistent contraceptive use, have the highest rate of unintended pregnancies, seek the highest numbers of abortions, and are still more likely to die in childbirth due to substandard care. In the book, we turn our attention to reproductive health policy due to the increased spotlight on the issue in the last two years. While restrictions on reproductive rights have been gaining steam in the United States in part due to the criminalization of reproduction1, restrictions regarding reproductive rights have been the norm globally. For instance, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development focuses on ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services through goal five of ensuring gender equity precisely because there is a systematic lack of attention to
gender issues.2 However, what often gets lost in these conversations is who ought to be centered in these conversations and how to make these policies equitable for all. Consequently, by limiting the scope of conversation to only abortion access, individuals whose gender identity no longer linguistically falls in line with the gendered language used in mainstream discussions regarding reproductive rights are functionally erased from conversations surrounding policy that continues to restrict their access.

When we conceptualized this project for the International Communication Association Conference in 2022, we had no idea the challenges that would await reproductive rights in the coming months. While our chapters center narratives from across the globe, as United States based editors of this volume, we were shaken by the chilling decisions in the last few most from the Dobbs decision and increasing attacks on gender-affirming care for individuals who identify as transgender. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—a case involving a challenge to a Mississippi ban on abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy. The ruling overturned Roe, which ended the federal constitutional right to abortion in the United States. Twenty-one states now have bans on “partial-birth” abortion. Thirteen of these states have laws are similar to the federal version that was upheld by the United States Supreme Court. Seven of them remain unchallenged. Seventeen of the states have bans that allow for an exception only when the patient’s life is in danger, two states allow for use of the procedure only when the patient’s physical health is severely compromised, and one state allows use of the procedure when the patient’s health is at risk. The definitions of when the patient’s life and health being at risk or severely compromised varies widely from state to state and county to county and has resulted in many doctors refusing to perform any procedures that could potentially be classified as an abortion for fear of punishment and several clinics and hospitals across the country have completely closed. Moreover, over 100 pieces of legislation have been introduced in state legislatures in 2023 with a focus on banning aspects of gender-affirming medical care. While most anti-trans bills look to prohibit gender-affirming care for people under 18, some states like Kansas, South Carolina, and Oklahoma have bills moving through their legislatures to ban care for people under 21 and Texas has proposed a ban for all individuals under 26. Additionally, on April 7, 2023, a federal judge in Texas ruled that the Food and Drug Administration didn’t properly approve Misoprostol—a drug which has been on the mark for more than 20 years in the United States for medical abortions. The fallout of the ruling could mean that Mifepristone becomes unavailable in the United States in the near future, though the ruling is currently being challenged in court.

One nuance in discussion of reproductive health justice that is often not discussed is that reproductive access is directly connected to mental health3. To divorce the two subjects is impossible because reproductive healthcare impacts every aspect of our lives. Furthermore, legal decisions such as Dobbs do not affect everyone equally, with our most disenfranchised populations bearing the brunt of decisions that do not take their lived experiences into consideration.4 As editors who engage in critical scholarship, we utilize critical race theory to make explicit circuits of power and powerlessness through the processes of naming. We acknowledge the situational aspect of power, even within hierarchal systems of marginalization. Therefore, we are rooted in self-reflexivity, and as such we position ourselves as: a cis-gendered, heterosexual, non-disabled, mixed-race, US born woman; a cis-gendered, heterosexual, non-disabled, Indo-Guyanese descent, US born woman; and an assigned female at birth, non-disabled, Indian descent, US born individual.

With all of this in view, this edited collection seeks to challenge and investigate assumptions about pre-existing notions regarding reproductive justice by grounding it in a more culturally-centered and intersectional perspective. Each chapter is written from an autoethnographic perspective to unpack the authors’ challenges with achieving reproductive justice for themselves and respective communities. Autoethnography was chosen as our primary methodology for this text as this method allows researchers the opportunity to draw on their own experiences to better understand a particular phenomenon or culture. Part I, Framing the Issue of Reproductive Justice, seeks to interrogate the idea of what reproductive justice means within relation to societal discourses surrounding reproduction and race. Part II, Patient Experiences, explores individual authors’ experiences as they attempt to define reproductive justice on their terms and how structural issues can enable or constrain their ability. Part III, Provider Experiences, attempts to look at how providers are interacting with the reproductive justice movement currently. Ultimately, our hope is that by presenting the different facets of reproductive justice in the form of narrative self-reflexivity, we can allow readers a space to safely evaluate their positionality within the larger reproductive justice movement while also acknowledging the complexity of the movement itself. Dr. Tomeka M. Robinson is the Senior Associate Dean of the Rabinowitz Honors College and a Professor of Rhetoric & Public Advocacy. Her scholarly work focuses on the intersections between health, culture, and policy.

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