The HerStory of Reproductive Justice
Origins · Chicago, June 1994
Why “choice” wasn’t enough
12
Black women formed the caucus that named the movement.
836
Black women signed their full-page statement in The Washington Post and Roll Call.
A group of Black women in attendance saw something else missing: the women’s rights movement, led largely by white, middle-class women, could not defend the needs of marginalized women, femmes, and trans and nonbinary people. “Choice” assumed everyone had the money, clinics, insurance and safety to choose.
Twelve of them met in a hotel room and formed a caucus. They fused reproductive rights with social justice and coined a new term: Reproductive Justice. They called themselves the Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice.
That August, they raised about $40,000 to run a full-page statement, “Black Women on Universal Health Care Reform,” in The Washington Post and Roll Call, followed by a press conference on Capitol Hill. The Reproductive Justice movement was born.
In June 1994, a pro-choice conference in Chicago, hosted by the Illinois Pro-Choice Alliance and the Ms. Foundation, gathered to discuss the Clinton administration’s health care reform plan — a plan that left out reproductive health care.
The world agrees in Cairo
September 1994
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At the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, 179 governments adopt a Programme of Action affirming that the individual right to plan your own family must be central to global development.
We honor the cultivators
In 1997 SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective was formed by 16 organizations of women of color from four mini-communities (Native American, African American, Latina, and Asian American) to create a national, multi-ethnic RJ movement.
Sister Song 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.
Cultivation of Reproductive Justice and the movement that followed was necessary due the long arch of injustice experienced by people pushed to the margins. At RJ Squared we believe that history informs our current moment. Learn more about the history that necessitated the RJ movement: Reproductive Larceny Timeline