Reproductive Justice

A term originally coined in the United States by organizations that promote the rights of Native women and women of color, reproductive justice is a concept that links reproductive rights with social justice. The reproductive justice movement arose in the late 1980s as an attempt by these organizations to expand the rhetoric of reproductive rights that focused primarily on choice within the abortion debate and was seen to restrict the dialogue to those groups of women they felt could make such a choice in the first place. In addition to advocating, as do traditional reproductive rights platforms, for the access of women to birth control, reproductive justice provides a framework that focuses additional attention on the social, political, and economic inequalities among different communities that contribute to infringements of reproductive justice. The paradigms that combine the empowerment of women with reproduction have since been categorized into three frameworks: reproductive health, reproductive rights, and reproductive justice. The reproductive health framework addresses inequalities in health services by advocating for the provision of services to historically under-served communities. The reproductive rights framework emphasizes the protection of an individual woman's legal right to reproductive health services, focusing on increasing access to contraception and keeping abortion legal. Finally, the reproductive justice framework utilizes an intersectional analysis of women's experiences and focuses on changing the structural inequalities that affect women's reproductive health and their ability to control their reproductive lives. As such, Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, recently renamed Forward Together, defines the concept as follows:

"Reproductive Justice is the complete physical, mental, spiritual, political, economic, and social well-being of women and girls, and will be achieved when women and girls have the economic, social, and political power and resources to make healthy decisions about our bodies, sexuality, and reproduction for ourselves, our families, and our communities in all areas of our lives."

Reproductive justice has expanded the pro-choice movement from a focus on abortion issues that marginalizes poor women and women of color to encompass a much broader scope of women's reproductive rights. Reproductive justice attempts to move women's reproductive rights past a legal and political debate to incorporate the economic, social and health factors that impact women's reproductive choices and decision-making ability. The reproductive justice movement, in its efforts to illuminate these issues, challenges the right to privacy framework established by Roe v. Wade that was predicated on the notion of choice in reproductive decision-making, and in effect turns the focus of reproductive decision-making away from one centered on civil rights toward that of human rights. The human rights approach of reproductive justice advocates for the ability of women to make decisions about their own reproduction and emphasizes the right of reproductive decision-making as a benefit afforded to all women regardless of their circumstances as opposed to the civil rights framework of choice that is connected to the possession of resources that influences the choices one has. As Rickie Solinger notes in Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know, "the term rights often refers to the privileges or benefits a person is entitled to and can exercise without special resources," whereas the privacy framework established by Roe, and as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Maher v. Roe, holds that "the state is not obligated to provide the means for women to realize their constitutionally protected rights, but only to refrain from putting any 'obstacles' in their 'path.'" The reproductive justice movement seeks to secure women's reproductive rights by attempting to abolish the civil rights foundation of a right to privacy created by Roe and that has restricted some women from receiving reproductive services because they lack the resources for a foundation of reproductive rights as human rights.

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