Reproductive Justice Network

A learning and action circle grounded in the reproductive justice framework that twelve Black women, including Loretta Ross, named into existence in 1994. The three pillars: the right to have a child, the right not to have a child, and the right to parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. The framework is older than any single court decision and is not collapsed by any single court decision. We organize around the framework rather than around the news cycle.

Membership includes movement organizers in reproductive-justice organizations, clinicians providing reproductive health care, lawyers doing the policy and litigation work, scholars writing the academic frame, doulas and midwives and abortion providers, advocates from inside and outside the medical system, and women whose primary expertise is their own life inside the framework.

What we talk about. Access to abortion in the United States after the Dobbs decision. The state-by-state legal map and how it actually plays out in clinic operations, patient travel, and provider risk. The abortion funds that move people across state lines and the medical-supply pipelines that are now run more like a humanitarian operation than a domestic healthcare system. The legal-defense funds for clinicians and patients criminalized under the new statutes.

Access to contraception. The long-acting reversible contraception options and the history of LARC use that has been coercive in our community. The conversation about choice that has to hold both the right to use LARC and the right to remove it without resistance. The contraception-counseling research that documents how Black women have been steered toward methods that benefit population-level metrics over individual autonomy.

Access to fertility care. The fertility-clinic landscape and the under-representation of Black women in fertility-treatment populations even though our infertility rates are higher. The cost structure that excludes us. The insurance fights. The IVF stories. The donor-conception stories. The third-party reproduction conversations, including the ethical surrogacy conversation that this network has touched on with the surrogacy-focused circle.

Maternal health. The mortality and morbidity numbers. The advocacy work to change the numbers. The provider-level work to change the numbers. The system-level work to change the numbers. The interaction with the Black maternal health network here on the specific question of postpartum care.

The fibroids conversation. The rate at which Black women carry uterine fibroids, the under-research on treatment options, the rush to hysterectomy that has historically resolved the symptom while removing options. The myomectomy advocacy. The fibroid researchers who are themselves Black women and the slow accumulation of better data.

Sterilization history. The eugenic sterilization programs documented in the United States and globally. The contemporary echoes — the prison-system sterilization scandals, the immigrant-detention sterilization allegations, the routine OB-GYN conversations that still slide too easily toward tubal ligation as a solution. The work of holding informed consent firm in clinical settings where it has historically been worn thin.

Parenting in safe and sustainable communities. The third pillar that the framework names explicitly. Housing, schools, environmental safety, police violence, the foster-care system. The work of the Dorothy Roberts critique of the child-welfare system and the family-defense organizations that are doing the on-the-ground response. The advocacy work to reform or abolish family-policing structures.

Trans inclusion in the framework. The naming of bodily autonomy as a frame that includes trans women and nonbinary people who can carry pregnancies. The fights inside reproductive-justice organizations about language and policy. The position this network holds, plainly stated: reproductive justice is for all people who can become pregnant and for all people who can parent.

International conversation. Reproductive-justice work on the African continent. The maternal health crises in specific countries. The abortion law landscape internationally. The diaspora-to-continent support that has happened around specific clinics and specific advocacy campaigns. The recognition that the framework began in the United States but the values are not contained by that border.

Cadence: a weekly news-and-action thread for the policy moves that need rapid response. A monthly long-form thread on a single structural question. A quarterly virtual session with a guest from a reproductive-justice organization. An annual in-person convening rotating between cities.

What we do: build the knowledge base. Make the introductions across organizations. Hold the line on the three pillars when the discourse tries to narrow it. Carry the framework into rooms where it is needed and not yet present. Train newer organizers in the history and the current strategy.

What we do not do: substitute for the formal reproductive-justice organizations doing the dedicated movement work. We are an adjacent and supportive learning circle. The advocacy lives in the organizations. We support the organizations. We hold the framework across our individual lives and across the work we do in our own fields.

The Loretta Ross framework is forty years strong. It has held us through several political eras and it will hold through several more. What we do here is learn it, apply it, and pass it forward.