Taking Action for Reproductive Justice: Our Favorite Tools, Resources, and Data

With the historic 50-year anniversary of Roe v. Wade (January 22, 2023) around the corner and basic reproductive rights deeply entrenched in politicized debate across the U.S., reproductive justice has again taken center stage.

Reproductive justice—a framework developed by Women of Color in the 1990s—combines reproductive rights with social justice and lifts up the marginalized individuals, families, and communities excluded by the early reproductive rights movement. It includes the rights to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent children in safe, accessible, healthy, sustainable communities. Reproductive justice is achieved when marginalized people—especially women, girls, and people who are LGBTQ+, disabled, low-income, undocumented, and/or of color—are able to freely and equitably exercise these rights.

In practice, reproductive justice involves explicitly naming and addressing the United States’ long legacies of reproductive abuses, and advancing reproductive rights and health from an intersectional, whole-person, community-centered perspective. Because reproductive control is a gateway to controlling entire populations, reproductive justice is key to dismantling hierarchies of inequity, wealth, and power. With this end goal in mind, movement-building for reproductive justice must always acknowledge, collaborate with, and advance justice movements for all marginalized people and our shared environment and communities.

This collection focuses specifically on taking action. It houses some of our favorite tools, toolkits, resources, datasets, maps, policy briefs, and stories related to reproductive justice, reproductive rights, maternal health, and key intersectional topics.

Because reproductive justice is so broad, action can take many forms. Key actions to start with include:

Advocating for reproductive rights, including access to contraception, birth control, and pregnancy termination
Eliminating disparities in prenatal, childbirth, and postpartum care, especially for Black women, birthing people, and infants
Improving healthcare for families, infants, and children
Addressing the United States’ long history of forced and coerced sterilization—including BIPOC, Puerto Rican, low-income, disabled, transgender, and intersex people—and the ongoing impacts these legacies have on marginalized communities today
Banning modern coerced and nonconsensual sterilization practices for people who are disabled, incarcerated, and/or detained im/migrants
Combatting ageist and sexist biases about “preserving fertility” to allow for consensual, informed sterilization
Advocating for all states to accept transgender and nonbinary peoples’ identification document updates without proof of surgeries, which often involve sterilization
Ending involuntary, medically unnecessary gender reassignment and sterilization surgeries of intersex infants and children
Expanding access to family planning, fertility, pregnancy, foster, and adoption services for LGBTQ+ families and parents
Expanding culturally-competent, gender-affirming healthcare and mental healthcare for LGBTQ+ people of all ages
Ending domestic, intimate partner, sexual, and child abuse
Addressing issues with family policing, separation, and foster care, especially for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color
Ensuring disabled peoples’ right to exist without fear of erasure through eugenics, gene editing, and/or sterilization

Please reach out with any suggested actions, resources, stories, or tools you think should be included here. We are committed to advancing reproductive justice and would love to hear from you.