Explore the vast range of titles available.

Environmental reproductive justice is increasingly being utilized as a framework for exploring how environmental exploitation and pollution contribute to reproductive health and reproductive injustices. However, little research explores how settler colonialism and historical oppression contribute to the physical transformation of land, and how this undermines tribal members’ health. Even less research explores the intersection of environmental justice and reproductive justice among Indigenous groups, especially in the Gulf South, who are especially vulnerable to environmental justice issues due to climate change, land loss, and oil company exploitation, and for tribes that are non-federally recognized. A qualitative description research methodology was used to conduct 31 life-history interviews with women from a Gulf Coast Indigenous tribe. Findings of this study reveal that central components of reproductive justice, including the ability to have children and the ability to raise children in safe and healthy environments, are undermined by environmental justice issues in the community. Among concerns raised by women were high rates of chronic healthcare issues among community members, and issues with infertility. Recognizing Indigenous sovereignty is central to addressing these environmental reproductive justice issues. This research is unique in exploring the topic of environmental reproductive justice among a state-recognized Gulf Coast tribe.

The Canadian national identity is often understood as what it is not; American. Inundation with American history, news, and culture around race and racism imbues Canadians with a false impression of egalitarianism, resulting in a lack of critical national reflection. While this is true in instances, the cruel reality of inequity, injustice and racism is rampant within the Canadian sexual and reproductive health and rights realm. Indeed, the inequitable health outcomes for Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) are rooted in policy, research, health promotion and patient care. Built by colonial settlers, many of the systems currently in place have yet to embark on the necessary process of addressing the colonial, racist, and ableist structures perpetuating inequities in health outcomes. The mere fact that Canada sees itself as better than America in terms of race relations is an excuse to overlook its decades of racial and cultural discrimination against Indigenous and Black people. While this commentary may not be ground-breaking for BIPOC communities who have remained vocal about these issues at a grassroots level for decades, there exists a gap in the Canadian literature in exploring these difficult and often underlying dynamics of racism. In this commentary series, the authors aim to promote strategies addressing systemic racism and incorporating a reproductive justice framework in an attempt to reduce health inequities among Indigenous, Black and racialized communities in Canada.

The study aimed to investigate the influence of legal status on reproductive health service availability for Afghan women immigrants and their adopted coping methods with obstacles. The study employed a qualitative design utilizing narrative in-depth interviews with twelve undocumented Afghan women, supplemented by five key informant interviews and field observations. The study findings revealed that legal uncertainty, along with cultural constraints, act as the main factor preventing undocumented women from accessing public healthcare facilities through their inability to present Proof of Registration (PoR) cards and breaking norms. Afghan women avoid hospital care because they face discriminatory treatment in addition to receiving unsupportive attitudes from medical workers and worries of deportation. Male guardianship policies combined with gender norm expectations reduce women's freedom to make reproductive decisions. As a result, many rely on informal healthcare providers, such as traditional birth attendants, despite the risks of maternal and neonatal complications. Using intersectionality and structural violence theories, this research contributes to migration and gender studies, as well as health inequity research, and recommends practical solutions for rights-based care policies. These theoretical frameworks illuminate how intersecting axes of oppression collectively shape reproductive health access and outcomes for undocumented Afghan women in Pakistan L'étude visait à analyser l'influence du statut juridique sur l'accès aux services de santé reproductive des immigrantes afghanes et les méthodes qu'elles adoptent pour faire face aux obstacles. L'étude a adopté une approche qualitative s'appuyant sur des entretiens narratifs approfondis avec douze femmes afghanes sans papiers, complétés par cinq entretiens avec des informateurs clés et des observations de terrain. Les résultats de l'étude ont révélé que l'insécurité juridique, conjuguée aux contraintes culturelles, constitue le principal facteur empêchant les femmes sans papiers d'accéder aux services de santé publics, en raison de leur incapacité à présenter une preuve d'enregistrement (PdR) et du non-respect des normes. Les femmes afghanes évitent les soins hospitaliers car elles sont victimes de discrimination, en plus du manque de soutien du personnel médical et de la crainte d'être expulsées. Les politiques de tutelle masculine, combinées aux attentes liées aux normes de genre, réduisent la liberté des femmes à prendre des décisions en matière de reproduction. Par conséquent, nombre d'entre elles font appel à des prestataires de soins informels, tels que les sages-femmes traditionnelles, malgré les risques de complications maternelles et néonatales. S'appuyant sur les théories de l'intersectionnalité et de la violence structurelle, cette recherche contribue aux études sur les migrations et le genre, ainsi qu'à la recherche sur les inégalités en matière de santé, et propose des solutions concrètes pour des politiques de soins fondées sur les droits. Ces cadres théoriques éclairent la manière dont les axes d’oppression qui se croisent façonnent collectivement l’accès et les résultats en matière de santé reproductive pour les femmes afghanes sans papiers au Pakistan

[...]that's because we have this really strong social safety net [audience laughter] that supports our pregnant people and protects their rights and interests [audience laughter], laws like the Family Medical Leave Act, giving someone time off work without pay or the Affordable Care Act, giving people the right to pay for health care services. What a shield law seeks to do, though it hasn't been tested yet in any court, is to keep states from extraditing providers or others who are not fleeing from justice, shield them from civil penalties, from criminal sanction and prosecution, stop depositions, stop investigations, and protect their medical malpractice insurance and protect them from discipline in their own state. There are significant limitations to shield laws: for one, the Massachusetts provider that has a shield law in place can't step foot in Texas and expect the Massachusetts law to protect them. Or the conflict between federal law and state law, as the EMTALA example illustrates? Aziza Ahmed, Professor of Law, N. Neil Pike Scholar, and co-director of the BU Law Program in Reproductive Justice at Boston University School of Law: I teach Reproductive Rights and Justice, Constitutional Law, and Human Rights.

This dialogic essay builds from the critical teachings of women of color organizers in Sister Song and Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice that assert that reproductive justice is an intersectional framework tying together multiple social movements. We share our diverse perspectives to offer an example of coalitional solidarity by including perspectives at the margin often relegated to invisibility in mainstream reproductive rights conversations.

This article describes my pedagogical approach to teaching “African American Women and the History of Reproductive Justice.” It considers innovative ways to teach reproductive justice in the in Africana Studies and Women’s Studies classrooms in the contemporary moment. It highlights altar work and community collaboration as important pedagogical tools for liberatory education. The article points to various practices that both blur the lines between past and present while simultaneously transgressing traditional classroom boundaries and asking collaborators to collectively envision new reproductive futures. It highlights two projects, the Reproductive Justice Community Altar (RJCA) and Community Herbal Gathering (CHG), to highlight the utility of these transformative pedagogical tools.

The Dobbs decision has created both opportunities and challenges in the classroom. On one hand, Dobbs animated student interest, increasing awareness of reproduction. On the other hand, media coverage of Dobbs primed students—particularly those who had not been exposed to reproductive justice—to think about abortion access in isolation from other topics and from an exclusively U.S. perspective. In this article, I discuss my experience teaching the Politics of Reproduction in Fall 2022. Among other goals, I wanted to expose students to La Marea Verde, or the “Green Wave,” of countries expanding abortion access in Latin America. By teaching Latin American abortion politics in relation to the Dobbs decision, I aim to disrupt U.S. hegemony. Specifically, teaching about the Green Wave highlights the possibility of organizing for reproductive justice outside the parameters of the state and challenges the logic of American Exceptionalism, which works to justify and normalize intersectional inequalities.

During the early 1990s, global health experts developed a new model of emergency obstetric care: post-abortion care or PAC. In developing countries with restrictive abortion laws and where NGOs relied on US family planning aid, PAC offered an apolitical approach to addressing the consequences of unsafe abortion. In Dying to Count , Siri Suh traces how national and global population politics collide in Senegal as health workers, health officials, and NGO workers strive to demonstrate PAC’s effectiveness in the absence of rigorous statistical evidence that the intervention reduces maternal mortality. Suh argues that pragmatically assembled PAC data convey commitments to maternal mortality reduction goals while obscuring the frequency of unsafe abortion and the inadequate care women with complications are likely to receive if they manage to reach a hospital. At a moment when African women face the highest risk worldwide of death from complications related to pregnancy, birth, or abortion, Suh’s ethnography of PAC in Senegal makes a critical contribution to studies of global health, population and development, African studies, and reproductive justice.  

This paper considers how archival research pedagogies help students explore the history of arguments for reproductive justice and connect them with recurring rhetorics and exigencies. I assign students to research in curated collections of primary sources and digital archives and to create a digital archive that documents past and current rhetoric. The archive applies scholarship on how rhetoric circulates as it looks at topics across temporal and textual boundaries. Students draw connections between the rhetoric of freedom and the imposition of forced-birth, censorship, and anti-trans laws through their exploration of primary sources from several pivotal historical moments in the history of reproductive justice.

Inadequate menstrual health education is a global public health issue. An innovative Global Classroom course, Teaching Menstrual Health: Dispelling Myths and Misconceptions, is situated at the intersection of gender, culture, and health. The course engages students from India and the U.S. in project-based learning on menstrual health and misconceptions that impact individuals and communities. Linking the fields of public health and education, students engage in lectures and discussions that address power imbalances and build cultural competency before working collaboratively on projects to address stigma around menstruation. The course was designed to address colonial narratives that marginalize menstruators and undermine women’s health. Student experiences are quoted to demonstrate how the five course development strategies create action for menstrual and reproductive justice.