My support of the right of women to obtain abortions has always sprung from my belief that women (and people in general) should have the utmost control over what happens to their bodies. This belief has always made my stance on abortion easy to delineate: for me, no one should be able to control a woman’s body for the benefit of a potential human being who has not yet come into living being. However, I must admit that the issue of pre-implantation trait selection threw me for a loop. Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) already exists that allows us to screen for genetic diseases and even to choose the sex of an embryo before implantation in the uterus; it does not seem far-fetched to assume that we may soon have technology that will allow us to choose for other traits in our future children, such as height, skin color, or perhaps even sexual orientation. While many may say that technology will not be advanced enough to control for such traits until far into the future, it is still an interesting thought experiment to think about how far a woman’s right to choose extends; does the right to choose only encompass a woman’s right to determine if and when she has a child, or does it also encompass a woman’s right to choose, as much as is scientifically possible, what type of child she has? While selecting against embryos and fetuses that have major genetic disorders is relatively uncontested (but even here, there is no consensus), is it appropriate for women to be able to choose what non-essential traits their child has? If a woman really wants a light skinned, brown eyed, six-foot tall male child, and technology is available that would enable her to select for those traits, does supporting reproductive choice mean we must support her decision to have precisely that kind of child? There are so many arguments for and against this, and there is such potential for abuse of this technology, that I anticipate my ambivalent stance on this issue to continue for quite a while. 

-Tina Sinha

Ever since I first learned about “conscience clauses,” which allow medical providers to refuse to provide medical treatment or referrals based on their own personal beliefs, they have fascinated me. I find pharmacist refusal clauses to be particularly interesting. While I whole-heartedly support each and every person’s right follow his or her conscience, I, as an RJ advocate, can’t help but notice that one person’s conscientious refusal is another person’s barrier to obtaining a necessary reproductive health service (for example, emergency contraception).  In rural communities, which may only have one pharmacy or pharmacist, a conscientious refusal can altogether prevent women from obtaining the health care services they need. I find myself thinking, “you are a pharmacist, dispensing prescriptions and behind-the-counter medication is your job – so do your job.” Nonetheless, I am uncomfortable compelling individuals to perform an action merely because that action is a commonly accepted practice in the profession.

A perfect case-in-point is the emerging “Refuse to Sign” campaign. Begun by clergy in Ohio, the Refuse to Sign Campaign seeks “the separation of church and state by advocating equal marriage rights for all people, regardless of sexual orientation, by encouraging faith communities, and their leaders, not to sign state-issued marriage licenses.” Some religious leaders are merely refusing to sign the licenses; some are refusing to perform marriage ceremonies at all. Following my pharmacist refusal logic, I should think that performing marriage ceremonies is the clergy’s job, and they should do it. But I don’t. I realize that the analogy isn’t a perfect fit, but it raises some interesting questions for me. Can I both support a pastor’s right to refuse to marry people and oppose a pharmacist’s right to refuse to dispense prescriptions? Or does support of one logically require support of the other?

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Last week, like many San Franciscans, I got geared up for a weekend full of LGBT Pride activities, culminating in a Sunday festival in the streets of San Francisco. 

The week before Pride I spent the weekend in New York, and made a point of visiting the Stonewall Inn, the site of the start of the famous Stonewall Rebellion 40 years ago.  In the 1960’s in New York, most gay bars were unable to obtain a valid liquor license, as licenses could be denied to establishments that would allow immoral behavior (such as homosexuality).  Gay men and lesbians would have to approach a peep hole, and the bouncer would have to decide based on their appearance whether they were gay and allowed in; of course they would also have to appear straight enough to avoid harassment on the way to the bar.  Raids were a regular part of patronizing a gay bar, and arrests were more likely if you were dressed in drag (guy or girl drag).  On July 28, 1969 Stonewall Inn was raided, and someone hit back, starting an incredible rebellion against the police who had for so long been oppressing queer folks.  A year after the Stonewall Rebellion, New York and Los Angeles held the first ever gay pride parades. 

Stonewall Inn is currently adorned in old photos of champions of the early gay rights movement.  It was the first time in my life that visiting a bar gave me goose bumps, and recounting the experience makes me want to cry.  It is a truly incredible experience to be in a place that you know began the movement for rights that you now enjoy. It was moving to know that without those who fought before us in this very bar, my whole life would be different. 

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Lawyers love to talk, so when you bring a group of lawyers-in-training together, there’s little need for conversation starters. Not surprisingly, I found this to be the case at this weekend’s Law Students for Reproductive Justice second annual Leadership Institute. What I did find surprising, but maybe shouldn’t have, was the energy, passion and insight of the conversations. While we had opportunities to engage in formal caucuses around issues facing new chapters, Law Students of Color, and ideologically conservative campuses, I witnessed some of the most inspiring conversations taking place in between the structured events and in whispers, mummers, and note passing during them. For many of us, the conversations spilled over into dinner and followed us into our hotel rooms. At the end of the weekend, I found myself giving a hurried hug to a woman I had met less than 48 hours prior as the subway doors closed mid-sentence on our conversation—which had started on a bus four hours earlier—about fostering and sustaining campus diversity. With the collective experiences of 80 law students advocating for reproductive justice across the country at our finger tips, I would have liked to see someone try to shut us up. 

But as we return to our respective campuses, people will try to shut us up, or at least temper our enthusiasm either because they disagree with the goals and values of the reproductive justice movement, or because they simply don’t see a place for reproductive justice in legal institutions or professions. While we received bags, literally, of activism tools this weekend, the greatest take-home of the weekend is the network of law students and professionals upon whom we can now call for strength and support whenever we confront the jungle gym of obstacles that can stand in the way of successful campus activism and reproductive justice advocacy.

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I was tuning out by tuning in to Ani DiFranco’s “God’s Country,” when it happened. I was traipsing along Chestnut Street en route to the Leadership Institute this morning, when I came face to face with an oversized banner, tacked to the side of a church, which quoted from Pearl S. Buck. “Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.”

Ah, my own little burning bush! “Dudette,” said the oversized banner, tacked to the side of a church. “Expand your horizons. Grow yourself!”

Indeed this weekend has been all about expanding horizons, affecting the way we think about campus organizing.

Through countless discussions with similarly-situated LSRJers and a series of fabulous presentations about successful LSRJ events, I’ve decided it’s important to meet in the middle sometimes. And I’ve decided it’s also really important to rock the metaphorical boat. I’m pumped about planning fall activities and feeling all kinds of support from this amazing network of people who are seriously a wealth of good ideas. We can’t stop at talking. Repro justice demands more and better. It doesn’t just happen.

- Jonelle Kusminsky

Being surrounded by a group of smart, driven, and passionate law students brought together by their common desire to advance the values of reproductive justice is like waking up on a winter morning wrapped in your down comforter—you never want to leave.  This is how I felt Saturday when I joined more than 80 law students from 50 law schools around the country to kick off the second annual Law Students for Reproductive Justice Leadership Institute. Our day was filled with activities and learning opportunities that ranged from brainstorming strategies for building sustainable campus chapters to learning the basics of a successful amicus brief to strengthening our abilities to identify strategic partnerships and work in coalition. These sessions and activities were led by new and seasoned reproductive justice activists including Tina Sinha, an intern at the LSRJ national office and rising 2L at UC Berkley School of Law, Jill Morrison, Senior Counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, and Cynthia Soohoo Director of the U.S. Legal Program at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

I felt a buoyant giddiness as I caucused with my peers about the challenges and success stories of new campus chapters—finally a group of people who understand me, who share my values and who want to support my efforts to advance reproductive justice on my campus and in my community. But as much as I would like to stay enveloped in this moment of warmth and comfort, I can’t ignore the fact that reproductive justice is anything but comfortable.

Being imprisoned and shackled during labor is not comfortable; finding a sanitary place to express breast milk between your Property and Torts classes is not comfortable; and viewing the fetus you’re about to abort on an ultrasound machine is anything but comfortable. But these are the realities we must confront, engage, and challenge as law students—and soon to be lawyers—committed to ensuring that all people and communities have access to the information, resources, and support they need to exercise their sexual and reproductive choices and rights.  

More than once I felt tears welling in my eyes as speakers relayed the intersecting oppressions that prevent women and their families from making meaningful choices about whether and when to have a child and from achieving happy and healthy birth outcomes. But the tears were tempered by the knowledge that I was in a room full of people dedicated to eradicating barriers to reproductive justice. And despite the discomforts that we may encounter on our respective campuses discussing sex, sexuality, reproduction, and their attendant taboos, a successful reproductive justice movement demands that we leave the warmth and comfort of the Leadership Institute—energized and renewed from the infusion of support we have received—and return to our campuses determined to forge unlikely, and even uncomfortable, partnerships that will enable us to reach more people , engage in more effective activism, and foster stronger legal scholarship and leadership around reproductive justice.

- Lauren R.S. Mendonsa

It’s 10 o’clock on Saturday morning, and we’ve just heard that reproductive justice is about “applying an intersectional analysis to the issues.” In other words, repro justice infractions don’t occur in a bubble! Often, women (and men) confronting reproductive injustices are the same ones confronting sexism, racism, classism, homophobia.

And at the intersection of sex and gender and race and class is LSRJ: these men and women convening in this great hall whose backgrounds are as varied as the privileges they’ve enjoyed and the rights for which they’ve had to fight. Hard.  This is probably why I love it.

This is definitely why I’m super-enjoying an opportunity to brainstorm with folks about shared concerns, nurturing one another’s aspirations to move and shake and make change. PS) Hugest thanks to tablemates Caleb, Kelly, Shannon, Tori, Megan, Kate, and Lauren for their willingness to share from their own experiences in campus organizing and for inspiring this blogger to take some of these same ideas home with me!

- Jonelle Kusminsky

President Obama has made health care reform a top priority, which is welcome news to millions of un- or under-insured Americans. Under the current system, women who purchase their own coverage already pay more then men – sometimes up to 50% more. As justification for the higher rates, insurers cite the fact that women tend to use more heath care, especially during their childbearing years. However, the rate disparity between women and men doesn’t disappear in insurance plans which do not cover maternity care. Healthcare reform holds the promise of more equitable pricing of insurance for men and women. 

Women (both insured and uninsured) shouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief just yet, however.  Women’s access to reproductive health care is currently under attack from both the left and the right. Nineteen House Democrats have said that they will not vote for healthcare legislation unless it explicitly excludes abortion coverage. The Republican leadership of the Senate Finance Committee is considering language in healthcare reform legislation that would eliminate coverage for abortion services. The exclusion of abortion services could result in women who currently have coverage losing that coverage, and prevent currently uninsured women from ever receiving coverage.

Health insurance is only as good as the services it covers, and having health insurance that doesn’t cover the services you need is tantamount to having no health insurance at all.  While healthcare reform is essential, reform at the expense of women’s health is too high a price to pay.  In addition to expanding the number of people who have health insurance, lawmakers should ensure that reform includes the healthcare services Americans need. In the case of American women, that need is comprehensive reproductive healthcare, including abortion coverage. Comprehensive health care reform should be just that – comprehensive.

-Megan Mullett

I have been interning at LSRJ for over a month now, and it has been a great learning experience, even though much of what I have learned makes me simultaneously sick to my stomach and incredulous that such egregious violations of human rights can still go on in this day and age. I attended LSRJ’s first Summer Networking Lunch last week at Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC), a legal services and advocacy organization that, as the name implies, works with incarcerated parents, with an emphasis on prisoners from Communities of Color and low-income communities. Most of us are aware that in the U.S., incarceration disproportionately impacts People of Color, the poor, and other marginalized populations. However, it was not until this Networking Lunch that I began to more fully realize that the harms done by incarceration unjustly impacts, not just the individuals who are imprisoned – many of whom are sentenced for non-violent drug offenses – but also their families and communities. Those sentenced to prison are taken well outside of their communities – presumably to take them away from the “influences” that made them turn to crime in the first place – where they are separated from their loved ones and are unable to maintain ties to their community that, if preserved, would perhaps make reintegration into society much more successful. This is especially hard for prisoners with children; even though a great many of those incarcerated are imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses, incarcerated parents are regularly disallowed from even basic physical contact with their children for more than a year. They also have very little time to even see their children, as those looking after their kids must take time off of work and expend resources they probably don’t have to bring the children to the prison, where there is no real place for kids to be comfortably. Families, and therefore the community at large, are further ripped apart if family members of prisoners (often grandparents of those incarcerated) who are perfectly able and willing to take care of these kids are disallowed from doing so because of laws that restrict the placement of children with ex-felons – even if the felonies were for crimes completely unrelated to children and were non-violent and occurred many years ago. Though it might seem reasonable at first to disallow placement of children with felons, in many cases, it seems that placing children with family members who love them and their incarcerated parents, who will work to keep the family together and who are invested in the success of these kids, is much better than taking children completely out of their community and placing them in homes at great distance from all of their social ties, and often into communities that in no way resemble the ones from which they came. In this way, many communities not only lose members due to incarceration, but also lose a lot of bright kids due to the repercussions of the incarceration of their parents – and this loss of human capital is often permanent.

-Tina Sinha