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Our membership includes and represents Indigenous, African American, Arab and Middle Eastern, Asian and Pacific Islander, and Latina women and LGBTQ people. SisterSong is the largest national multi-ethnic Reproductive Justice collective. The intersectionality of RJ is both an opportunity and a call to come together as one movement with the power to win freedom for all oppressed people. All oppressions impact our reproductive lives RJ is simply human rights seen through the lens of the nuanced ways oppression impacts self-determined family creation. Join together across issues and identities.
#DEFINE SONGSTER FULL#
Our society will not be free until the most vulnerable people are able to access the resources and full human rights to live self-determined lives without fear, discrimination, or retaliation. Audre Lorde said, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” Marginalized women face multiple oppressions and we can only win freedom by addressing how they impact one another.Ĭenter the most marginalized. RJ works to understand and eradicate these nuanced dynamics.Īddress intersecting oppressions. Reproductive politics in the US is based on gendered, sexualized, and racialized acts of dominance that occur on a daily basis. To achieve Reproductive Justice, we must…Īnalyze power systems.
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Abortion access is critical, and women of color and other marginalized women also often have difficulty accessing: contraception, comprehensive sex education, STI prevention and care, alternative birth options, adequate prenatal and pregnancy care, domestic violence assistance, adequate wages to support our families, safe homes, and so much more. There is no choice where there is no access. Even when abortion is legal, many women of color cannot afford it, or cannot travel hundreds of miles to the nearest clinic. Mainstream movements have focused on keeping abortion legal as an individual choice. RJ is based on the United Nations’ internationally-accepted Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a comprehensive body of law that details the rights of individuals and the responsibilities of government to protect those rights.Ībout access, not choice.
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We believe that Reproductive Justice is…Ī human right. Just three years later, in 1997, SisterSong was formed to create a national, multi-ethnic RJ movement. The progenitors of RJ launched the movement by publishing a historic full-page statement with 800+ signatures in The Washington Post and Roll Call. Rooted in the internationally-accepted human rights framework created by the United Nations, Reproductive Justice combines reproductive rights and social justice. These women named themselves Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice, and RJ was born. We needed to lead our own national movement to uplift the needs of the most marginalized women, families, and communities.
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They recognized that the women’s rights movement, led by and representing middle class and wealthy white women, could not defend the needs of women of color and other marginalized women and trans* people. Right before attending the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, where the entire world agreed that the individual right to plan your own family must be central to global development, a group of black women gathered in Chicago in June of 1994. Indigenous women, women of color, and trans* people have always fought for Reproductive Justice, but the term was invented in 1994. The Herstory of Reproductive Justice (RJ) SisterSong defines Reproductive Justice as the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.