Guaranteeing Reproductive Justice for All

The vision of the Black women who founded the reproductive justice movement 31 years ago goes beyond policy—it calls for a cultural shift toward valuing the humanity of Black people.

I want for my daughters what we all want for the generations to come—a future where they are safe, healthy, and free to pursue their dreams and build families if and when they choose. While I worry about the barriers that stand in the way, I know this future is possible because generations before us laid the groundwork, and because leaders today continue to guide us toward justice and liberation for all.

Thirty-one years ago, Black women founded the reproductive justice movement, which is rooted in the idea that we all inherently have the right to live free. I take comfort in knowing that my children and I walk paths these women helped create. But Black women today face deepening oppressions based on race, class, gender, and sexuality. As a result, justice requires more than policy change. It calls also for a cultural shift that values our humanity as Black people.

Historically, every time Black and brown people, disabled people, queer people and others have made progress in carving out the rights to have agency over our own bodies, there has been backlash—and that continues today. With gratitude to the founders of the reproductive justice movement, at RWJF we believe that everyone should have the right to reproductive and sexual health and autonomy, including: choosing whether to have children or not; receiving dignified and quality care before, during, and after birth; and parenting children in safe, sustainable communities. But this is not reality for many people in the United States today.

The leaders of Black maternal health

My personal experiences with Black maternal health injustice drive my commitment to support RWJF grantees who are on the frontlines of advancing equity in maternal and reproductive health.

When I was in high school, my 34-year-old aunt passed away three months postpartum. She left behind a husband, a toddler, and a newborn baby. Before she passed, she was a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) nurse providing maternal and infant healthcare. To endure the death of someone that young—and someone who had extensive knowledge of the maternal healthcare system that failed her—remains profoundly traumatic for our family. Sadly, we are not alone in this experience.

Maternal and infant health injustice affects all communities, but it harms people of color the most. This disparity is rooted in racism and discrimination in healthcare, widespread lack of access to healthcare coverage, and lack of quality, respectful, and dignified reproductive healthcare. As a nation and in philanthropy, we need to make a deep, sustained commitment to addressing the structural and systemic challenges that drive these disparities.

But I also want to encourage us to remember the humanity of those who face these injustices, like my aunt and family, and honor the Black movement leaders—my ancestors—who fought to advance reproductive justice despite enormous challenges. People like Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey, who we commemorate today as the Mothers of Gynecology have a lot to teach us, as do the Grand Midwives, who brought countless children into the world and were often the sole healthcare providers for their communities.

What I bring to my work in birthing justice

Losing my aunt drove me to turn my pain into purpose. One of the reasons I became a public health professional and trained doula is to help other families have safe, positive birthing and postpartum experiences.

I gave birth at around the same age my aunt was when she passed, and I found myself in a similar and sadly common predicament. I lacked access to dignified, whole-person, and full-spectrum care that honored my culture and unique experiences. But as a doula, I now had the chance to provide others with the kind of care that I yearned for myself.

My doula training taught me to meet people where they are and adapt care to their specific needs and desires. One way I could help advance reproductive justice is to provide care in a profoundly humane way, especially to those who have systematically faced barriers to this kind of care. That is building power. It is an act of resistance that reshapes narratives around community care, trust, and accountability and pushes our healthcare system to stop prioritizing profits over people. It is the work RWJF champions today so we can pave the way together to a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right.

The roots of reproductive justice

Twelve Black women founded the reproductive justice movement in June 1994: Dr. Toni M. Bond, Rev. Alma Crawford, Evelyn S. Field, Terri James, Bisola Marignay, Cassandra McConnell, Cynthia Newbille, Loretta Ross, Elizabeth Terry, Rep. ‘Able’ Mable Thomas, Winnette P. Willis, and Kim Youngblood.

The movement established three key pillars of reproductive justice: the right to bodily autonomy, the right to decide whether or not to have children, and the right and ability to raise children to not just survive but thrive.

Those pillars remain urgent today as we continue to face attacks on reproductive healthcare and autonomy, including the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The onslaught also includes restrictions to and attacks on gender-affirming care, fertility treatments, LGBTQIA+ families, mental health, and more. Many of these attacks disproportionately harm people who already experience inequities in healthcare, namely people of color, people with disabilities, the LGBTQIA+ community, and people earning lower incomes.

While the implications go far beyond family planning, we know that limiting access to abortion worsens maternal health and exacerbates health disparities. That’s why post-Dobbs, RWJF provided emergency funding to its birth and reproductive justice grantees and revised its stance to allow grants to be used to support abortion care work. We took this vital step after listening to the wisdom of those closest to the work.

Despite the brilliance and accomplishments of movement leaders, reproductive justice efforts have long been underfunded and under-resourced. Through our work to transform health and healthcare systems to be more equitable, we are supporting the reclamation, expansion, and protection of Black midwifery, as well as building capacity, strengthening networks, boosting the infrastructure for narrative change, and building power and solidarity across movements. By organizing funders, we aim to ensure these movements have the resources they need to create lasting change.

There is no justice without intersectionality

My training and experiences as a doula inform my work to achieve a vision of reproductive justice that includes all people.

I’m grateful to my colleague Jody Struve for sharing her reflections on what reproductive justice means to her as a member of the queer community.

"Reproductive justice is about choosing when, how, and whether we create families. When my wife and I were starting our own family, we each wanted to carry one of our children. But during what should have been a joyful experience, our doctor disregarded our values and priorities for how we wanted to create our family and aggressively steered us away from our vision. Later, we went on to have a healthy, incredible baby girl. But I hope that our collective efforts toward reproductive justice create the space for every person to knit and weave and choose their families in a way that brings them joy and affirmation."

My vision for reproductive justice

The reproductive justice movement must include us all, no matter our race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or ability, because healthy communities depend on the health and wellbeing of our children and the people who bring them into the world. More work remains at RWJF and across philanthropy to show up to this moment as the partner this movement needs.

As a doula, I had the privilege of creating a space for healing where too often there is harm. I know that by transforming our healthcare system and the narratives that shape it, we can guarantee that every person has the opportunity to bring their child into such a space, and every child has the freedom to live the kind of life we dream of for them.