LEADERSHIP SUCCESSION IN INTERSECTIONAL MOBILIZATION: AN ANALYSIS OF THE CHICAGO ABORTION FUND, 1985–2015*

While intersectionality is increasingly an object of inquiry in social movement research, few scholars examine leadership’s role in enabling intersectional mobilization. This article draws on data from archives and in-depth interviews (n = 18) to explore the importance of leadership succession in transforming the Chicago Abortion Fund between 1985–2015. Specifically, it explores two types of succession: (1) from grassroots or community-embedded leadership to bridge leadership (which connects the community to the organization), and (2) from bridge to formal leadership. Our study shows how these two types of succession were instrumental in operationalizing margins-to-center organizing. We present our findings in a series of conjunctures or episodes to elucidate how Black women and women of color moved gradually through different forms of leadership. In so doing, they changed the framing and praxis of the organization from a social service agency to a radical reproductive-justice social movement organization.

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Making Democracy Real

Meridians ◽

10.1215/15366936-7297169 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 18 (1) ◽

pp. 94-151

Author(s):

Joyce C. Follet

Keyword(s):

Black Women ◽

Birth Control ◽

Women Of Color ◽

Women's Leadership ◽

Reproductive Justice ◽

Deep Roots ◽

Human Rights Movement ◽

The 1960S ◽

Access To Contraception ◽

Gain Access

AbstractThis essay offers a historical overview of African American women’s efforts to gain access to contraception, from the early stirrings of the campaign to legalize birth control in the 1910s to the eve of mass movements for racial equality and women’s rights in the 1960s. The birth control struggle becomes a window on the racial, gender, and economic structures black women negotiated in pursuit of sexual and reproductive self-determination at that time. Taking us back a century, and with emphasis on resilience and resistance, their story reminds us of the deep roots and broad vision of black women’s leadership in what has become a women-of-color–led human rights movement for reproductive justice today.

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Why Reproductive Justice Matters to Reproductive Ethics

Reproductive Ethics in Clinical Practice ◽

10.1093/med/9780190873028.003.0003 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 17-28

Author(s):

Melissa Gilliam ◽

Dorothy Roberts

Keyword(s):

Black Women ◽

Women Of Color ◽

The United States ◽

Ethical Principle ◽

Indigenous Women ◽

Safe Motherhood ◽

Reproductive Justice ◽

Reproductive Ethics ◽

Long Acting ◽

Disproportionate Burden

This chapter addresses the historical and current attempts by physicians and legislators to regulate the reproduction of Black, Latina, and Indigenous women, with a particular focus on Black women. It connects the contemporary language promoting long-acting reversible contraception for “risky” populations to past policies coercing Black, Latina, and Indigenous women to use contraception and undergo sterilization. At the same time, these efforts to regulate the reproduction of women of color coincide with a rising number of abortion restrictions and lack of access to abortion and safe motherhood, which affect women of color disproportionately. Black women bear a disproportionate burden of the staggering and rising maternal mortality rate in the United States. These topics are often omitted from discussions about reproductive ethics, and social justice is often neglected as a major ethical principle. Approaching the reproductive freedom of women of color from a reproductive justice perspective, therefore, offers an important way to expand our understanding of reproductive ethics.

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