Hi everyone and welcome to Repo(ssess) Repro(ductive Justice), the blog of the new Law Students for Reproductive Justice (LSRJ) , formerly Law Students for Choice. I’m your host, Julie B. Ehrlich, a 3L at NYU School of Law and a member of LSRJ’s Board of Directors (my bio).

While this blog is connected to LSRJ, the opinions expressed on it will be wholly my own. That said, I thought it might be fitting, given LSRJ’s new identity, to use this first post to explain what exactly is reproductive justice and why exactly this organization has decided to take it on as its new name.

Reproductive justice – a term made popular by the organization SisterSong, the Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective – encompasses LSRJ’s goals of recognizing and overcoming the causes of reproductive oppression through law and advocacy. Reproductive justice aims not only to ensure that U.S. law protects abortion rights but also to make sure that abortion, sex education, and contraception are available and accessible to everyone. Reproductive justice supports unobstructed decisionmaking about sexual and reproductive health for people of all sexes and all sexual orientations, so that everyone has full control over whether and when to become parents.

The idea of reproductive justice, we think, better represents the diversity and intersectionality at the heart of our movement, and highlights the collaborative nature of our work. By framing the issues as one of justice as opposed to freedom or rights, we are calling attention to the claim – our belief – that we all possess not only a negative right to be free from government interference and discrimination in the way we live our sexual and reproductive lives, but also a positive right to be supported in those choices.

At root, though, it’s only the name that’s new. LSRJ has been working to support reproductive justice and to train law students as advocates since its founding as LSFC. It’s just that now we have a name to match our mission.

So that’s the spiel or at least the opening salvo. In the future, look for posts here about everything from women in prison to midwifery and doulas to Supreme Court decisions to transgender rights. And for all of you LSRJ activists and advocates out there, I want to hear from you. Send me your success stories, the battles you’re fighting on campus, or links to other issues you think are important for reproductive justice.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2007 at 9:23 pm and is filed under julie erhlich, welcome. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.