What Does Reproductive Justice Have To Do With STEM?
I was 24 and in the middle of my first year as an undergraduate in physics when I learned that I was six weeks pregnant. Having an abortion was a clear decision to make. I had recently left an abusive relationship, and was working a full-time job while also attending school full-time in the evenings. Had it not been for access to resources (a job that payed slightly above minimum wage), a manager who supported me in confidence, giving me the time off that I needed, and care through Planned Parenthood, my life would likely look very different today. Needless to say, this was a pivotal moment both for me as a young adult and for my STEM career journey––and I have no regrets.
“The law bans abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy — before many people even know they’re pregnant.” –ACLU
Texas’ new abortion ban (S.B. 8) will “decimate abortion access in the state” according to an ACLU press release. Of people who receive abortions in the state approximately 85–90%, “are at least six weeks into pregnancy.” The potential for a chilling domino effect may already be playing out in Florida.
In response, white feminism is focused on abortion rights and slogans like “my body, my choice”––wringing its hands as it trades pink hats for red hooded robes. Outside of the mainstream movement, Black feminist, activist, and professor Loretta J. Ross presents us with a more nuanced framework: reproductive justice.
“While abortion is one primary health issue, we knew that abortion advocacy alone inadequately addressed the intersectional oppressions of white supremacy, misogyny, and neoliberalism.” –Loretta J. Ross
Ross was one of 12 Black women who created this intersectional framework in 1994, one that centered communities for whom the stakes were highest — for example those at the intersections of race, class, gender, and immigration status — and broadened the discourse to include structures that lead to disproportionate impacts in those communities. To add further nuance to the conversation, we could examine settler-colonialism, the legacy of which continues to impact, for example, the reproductive freedom of the people of Guam, a U.S. territory (read: colony). We might also examine carcerality, or the ways in which gendered and racialized violence is disproportionally experienced by queer, trans, and disabled people — communities often left out of mainstream conversations about abortion rights.
So…what does reproductive justice have to do with STEM?
Everything.
Reproductive justice means access to abortion as a human right, but it also means access to adequate healthcare, a living wage, housing and food security, the ability to live free of violence (whether it’s domestic, gendered, or state-sanctioned). Reproductive justice advocates for the strengthening of communities and the disruption of racist, capitalist, abelist, cis-heterosexist systems and institutions — the kind of disruption STEM practitioners have poured their energy into for decades. The kind of disruption that, for a brief moment, #ShutDownSTEM last summer.
Whether your day job is to tell stories of the Universe with math and code or to develop breakthrough technology, STEM disciplines and institutions are products of these larger social systems. Inadequate healthcare and childcare, toxic workplace culture, gendered violence, just to name a few, are conditions that exist in your labs, departments, offices, and universities. And marginalized students, junior faculty, and employees of color have likely been the ones trying to do something to change those conditions.
If you think you have no stake or no place in these issues, think again. Learn about the history that links eugenics and forced sterilization of women of color to the family planning movement. Advocate for policies like paid family leave, and equitable hiring or admissions practices. Donate to and amplify reproductive justice organizations in Texas.
P.S. Here’s a starter reading list. What would you add? Share your picks in the comments section!
Books
- Women, Race, and Class, Angela Davis (1981)
- How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States, Daniel Immerwahr (2019)
- Feminism, Interrupted, Lola Olufemi (2020)
- The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (2021)
Articles
- ‘Heartbeat’ Abortion Bans Ignore Disabled People, Imani Barbarin (Forbes, 2019)
- ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ And The Reproductive Rights Movement’s White Supremacy Problem, Sherronda J. Brown (Wear Your Voice Magazine, 2018)
- Defining the Flow — Using an Intersectional Scientific Methodology to Construct a VanguardSTEM Hyperspace, Jedidah Isler et. al (2021)
- Eugenics and Birth Control, PBS (n.d.)
- Reproductive justice as intersectional feminist activism, Loretta J. Ross (Souls, 19(3), 286–314, 2017)
