Culture Shift Work

This chapter explores the centrality of cultural politics as reproductive justice organizations collaborate strategically with artists and researchers to inform specific campaigns. It discusses five initiatives that contest vilification of women of color and stereotypes about “the family” and offers alternative narratives and representations. Through reframing, reproductive justice activists contest dominant thinking about women of color, serve as cultural translators of the reproductive justice framework, and promote the discourse about empowering women of color.

Conclusion

This chapter reflects on how the movement for reproductive justice addresses the increased polarization of politics around immigration and reproductive rights in the wake of the election of President Trump. It argues that women of color in the movement for reproductive justice have a history of crafting a politics of inclusion that aims to empower those who are marginalized by intersecting systems of power, with a radical vision of citizenship. These activists insist that poor women of color have the human right to access to health care with dignity as well as the right to healthy lives and wellness.

From Self-Care to Healing Justice

Drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa’s thinking about spiritual activism, this chapter presents four cases of self-care as well as public practices that help communities heal from historical trauma. It argues that the work of self-care and spiritual activism in communities of color contests the individualism embedded in neoliberal health-care systems and instead crafts the collective politics of healing justice.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the movement for reproductive justice, which uses intersectionality and human rights frameworks on behalf of women of color’s right to access health care. The chapter critiques the varied forms of reproductive oppression against which these activists engage in grassroots organizing, cultural politics, and policy advocacy. The chapter discusses the research questions as well as methodology that draws from ethnographic research, including participant observation, focus groups, and interviews with activists and participants working with thirteen reproductive justice organizations. The chapter provides an overview of the book.

Collaborating across Difference

This chapter responds to Kimberlé Crenshaw’s query, What are intersectionality’s “ready-to-work skills”? by focusing on two campaigns run by reproductive justice activists. One campaign is about the human right to health care in Texas and led eventually to the lawsuit Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, and the other is about the repeal of the Maximum Family Grant rule in California. The chapter argues that reproductive justice activists resist conservative forces and advance their own goals using strengths-based messaging, cross-sector collaboration, including support for one another, and strategic use of storytelling in the context of safer spaces.

Youth Mobilization

This chapter explores how three different reproductive justice organizations use the language of youth empowerment. It argues that increasingly storytelling is becoming a methodology within the movement for reproductive justice and illustrates how organizations train youth to use narratives to convey analyses of social problems and to garner support from policy makers and community members for specific policy changes related to sex education, access to health care, and valuing the perspectives of young people. Youths’ participation in reproductive justice youth programs helps them to navigate the transition to adulthood with the understanding that true empowerment addresses structural inequalities.