Reproductive Justice Now!: How Intersectionality Will Help Us Achieve the World We Want

For 41 years, access to safe, legal abortion has been the law of the land and the majority of Americans continue to oppose efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade. However, the fight for Reproductive Justice is about much more than this court decision. Reproductive Justice will only be achieved when every person has the social, economic, and political resources to make healthy decisions about their bodies, sexuality, and reproduction for themselves, their families, and their communities.

The term Reproductive Justice was coined in 1994 at the United Nation’s International Commission on Population Development in Cairo, Egypt. The reality then and now is that a range of social and health disparities continue to disproportionately affect the people of color and people of the global south, including higher rates of cancers, unintended pregnancies, and sexually transmitted infections. Women of color even have a lower life expectancy than white women across the board due to these disparities. The participants at the ICPD quickly realized the movement for reproductive rights wasn’t taking any of this, any of their lived experiences into account  -- so they created a movement that did. 

Since then, the global movement for reproductive justice has been true to its origins – consistently challenging the traditional feminist movement and engaging communities of color, young people, and other marginalized groups as its dynamic leadership. Now, at the 20^th year anniversary of the term’s creation we must lean into the successes and challenges of the movement to find a path to victory.