Reproductive Justice - Origins in The United States

Origins in The United States

Roots of the reproductive justice framework can be traced to the abortion debate in the United States and the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Many new reproductive health organizations for women of color such as the National Black Women’s Health Project were created in the 1980s and 1990s and objected to the rhetoric employed by the mainstream reproductive rights movement to define these along the pro-choice and anti-abortion lines that figured in the abortion disputes. The new organizations felt that the term “choice” excluded minority women and “masked the ways that laws, policies and public officials punish or reward the reproductive activity of different groups of women differently." Activists for the rights of women of color subsequently expanded their attentions from a focus on unfair sterilization practices and high rates of teen pregnancy among women of color to include the promotion of a more inclusive platform to advance the rights of all women.

The concept of reproductive justice was articulated first in 1994 at a national pro-choice conference for the Black Women’s Caucus that was sponsored by the Illinois Pro-Choice Alliance in Chicago. This caucus followed the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) that had taken place two months prior. The ICPD produced the Cairo Programme of Action that identified reproductive health as a human right. The Black Women’s Caucus sought to adapt to the United States' reproductive rights movement the human rights framework outlined by the ICPD and defined the term “reproductive justice” originally as “reproductive health integrated into social justice.”

In 1997, a cohort of groups that promote the rights of Native and women of color, some of which had been involved in organizing the Black Women’s Caucus, organized together to form the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective. SisterSong spearheaded the push for a new, comprehensive reproductive justice movement as a more inclusive alternative to the “divisive” argument for women’s rights that primarily emphasized access to contraception and the right to an abortion. The founders of SisterSong also felt that some of the pro-choice activists “seemed to be more interested in population restrictions than in women’s empowerment.”

As the collective became more organized, reproductive justice figured more prominently in the discussion of women’s rights and empowerment. The 2003 SisterSong National Women of Color Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights Conference popularized the term and identified the concept as “a unifying and popular framework” among the various organizations that attended the conference. Since then, groups that promote women’s rights such as the National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood have increasingly used the language of reproductive justice for their own advocacy. The movement has become more mainstream as organizations such as the Law Students for Reproductive Justice that focus on the promotion of rights of all women have also become involved in this activism.