JoAnna Smith, Emory University

During the first day at the Leadership Institute, we discussed how the reproductive justice model differs from other frameworks for reproductive rights or social justice.

It made me think back to when I was working as a labor doula before law school.  A labor doula is a trained and experienced professional who provides continuous physical, emotional and informational support to a woman before, during and just after birth.  A doula learns that she is there to help the woman have a safe and satisfying childbirth as the woman defines it. It is not the role of the doula to discourage the laboring woman from her choices, nor to project their own values and goals onto her.

As a doula, I was required to listen more than I talked.  I learned to encourage women to ask questions and get information rather than doing it for her.  I learned that I couldn’t possibly understand all the circumstance of another woman’s life that drive her to make the decisions she does, but that I should do everything in my power to hear her and help her achieve those choices.  I learned to work behind the scenes, providing valuable skills and resources when needed, but never taking the spotlight away from those who really mattered: the woman, her family, and supporters.  Outside of the birthing room, I advocated for changes in a complex system of institutions, laws, and circumstances that make it difficult for women to have the birth they knew was best for them.

What I heard during the RJ 101 session made me think hard about the role of an RJ lawyer.  In law school we learn how to be the interpreter of the law and the one who gives advice.  We are taught to stand up in front and speak confidently.  We are taught to be, or at least act like, the experts our education prepares us to be.

But the reproductive justice framework asks us to focus on the intersections of race, class, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender expression, immigration status, and ability and how they impact access, agency, and autonomy in shaping one’s reproductive destiny.   It shifts our role from achieving a right or winning a case for someone to one that requires us to listen and to act only once we attempt to understand those we serve.  It asks us to work with communities as allies, strategists, and advisors to overcome the complex systems, laws, and circumstances that make it difficult for people to have the reproductive destiny they know is best for them.

We must be doulas in the reproductive justice movement.

I am incredibly honored to be at the L I with so many soon-to-be lawyers who will continue to doula this movement, and those it affects, forward with compassion, grace, and integrity.

Burke Bindbeutel, University of Missouri School of Law

Last week, at a trial in a federal courthouse, I got to observe the effects of immigration policy on the human body’s dignity. If it does nothing else, reproductive justice limits what our government can force upon our bodies–the sources of our most fundamental autonomy. The people I saw in court came north to live by their sweat, and their bodily presence on this side of the Rio Grande was enough to have them rounded up and caged. Although it was chilling to witness the deprivation, I was heartened by the response of the court to the human need.

A fellow Mizzou law student and I dispatched to the borderlands during our spring break. In Del Rio, Texas we caught an episode of the fast-paced human drama known as Operation Streamline. Nine out of eleven Border Patrol sectors along the U.S.-Mexico border have opted to criminally prosecute unlawful migrants. Instead of the consequence-free administrative process favored by California, where Mexican migrants are released at the border, Streamline ensures a criminal record for the migrants. If they attempt to return to the United States, their offense could land them two years in jail.

Sixty-two defendants pled guilty and were sentenced in less than an hour. Just as the blisteringly fast proceeding ended, the prisoners complained that they had not received clean clothes or showers during their five-day incarceration. Inadequate hygienic services probably did not outrage the prisoners. They had already endured a difficult journey, some of them from as far as El Salvador. If clandestine train-hopping across a war zone didn’t deter them, then they probably don’t mind going without soap. But it’s incumbent on the judicial system that removes people en masse to provide basic dignities, which are just as necessary due process of law.

I thought of our work with LSRJ when one of the two women being sentenced told the judge that she needed to tomar pastillas para mi embarazo. The girl couldn’t have weighed ninety pounds. She was sitting out in the public benches due to space constraints, and from where I was sitting I couldn’t see her shackles, so I thought she was there to watch, like I was. But she was a pregnant border-crosser who had politely asked for pills to relieve morning sickness. Pregnancy has always seemed an unimaginable servitude to me, and here was this woman, barely more than a girl, wading across the Rio Grande by moonlight and imagining a better home for her kid than war-torn Mexico.

Our constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship has been rebranded as a loophole for the offensively-coined “anchor babies.” Because people born on American soil are citizens regardless of their parents’ status, the anti-immigration lobby has detected an incentive for poor and pregnant people to decamp for their child’s birth.

It’s true that free trade policies combined with porous borders have encouraged mass migration. Perhaps if the United States were to curtail the opportunity for fresh arrivals to plant roots in our country, we could avoid having to deal with pregnant prisoners. Senator John Kyl advocates repeal of birthright citizenship. But I don’t think that would strike at the root of the problem of massive inequality in the border region. The border divides north from south, but it also divides rich and poor. Even if the U.S. won’t provide this woman a hospital bed, it ought to at least see that the basic needs of her body are attended to.

Concerns that so-called “aliens” have compromised hospital services are misplaced. In rural Texas, hospital care’s availability suffers from poor regulation and exploitative insurance companies. Blaming opportunists distracts from the systemic problems in our health system. It’s similar to those who blame the struggles of an unequal and financially strapped education system on a few freeloaders.

Reproductive justice will exist when people can “decide whether, when and how to have and parent children, with dignity, free from discrimination, coercion or violence.” It’s a sign of an unresponsive immigration policy when prospective mothers risk life and limb for a chance the chance to safely deliver. In Del Rio, the judge assured the prisoner that she would receive medical attention, but for the dozens more defendants on the next day’s Streamline docket, there are no guarantees.

Burke Bindbeutel, University of Missouri School of Law

Although Mizzou Law is located in what some call “red state America,” our LSRJ chapter has seldom encountered any hostility or opposition from anti-choice groups. Even the picketers outside Columbia’s Planned Parenthood have a dogged, resigned vibe. The hardest thing for our reproductive justice activism to overcome is the visceral reaction that our issues can induce in students.

I was making my schpiel for LSRJ at 1L orientation, taking care to maintain a friendly and upbeat tone. When I mentioned awareness of sexual assault, I heard sharp intakes of breath from several different points in the room, and a softly muttered “Jesus!” Perhaps I was too imagistic in describing a problem that is a serious issue on ours and every campus. But I was disappointed in the hypersensitivity of the student body. Don’t lawyers have to deal with uncomfortable subject matter all the time?

Martha Nussbaum takes on just this kind of kneejerk dismissal in her book “From Disgust to Humanity.” Nussbaum takes a cue from the New Hampshire legislator who denounced at a state Judiciary Committee hearing the act of “taking the penis of one man and putting it in the anus of another man and wriggling it around in excrement.” It’s only natural that someone who can barely countenance the idea of homosexual contact is light years away from asserting the reproductive rights of her constituents. Nussbaum describes a serious need to break through the reflex of revulsion in order to ensure the reproductive rights.

I have detected the same reflex in the law school building where I lately spend all my waking life. It’s not that my peers are stridently or unanimously anti-choice, or believers in the personhood of fetuses. It’s that they would prefer to think about anything other than forced Caesarean sections or syphilitic penises. (Prison rape jokes bafflingly remain in bounds).

At our screening of the Wednesday webinar “If You Care About Criminal Justice, You Should Care About Reproductive Justice,” we had a first-time attendee who took notes and appeared to have a thoughtful and critical attitude. He seemed like just the sort of curious and open-minded student that we seek to reach.

We were sharing reactions after the program’s conclusion, and our visitor confessed to shock over the suggestion that a mother could ever opt for a vaginal birth after having had a past Caesarean. I responded that the speaker phrased the issue not as a recommendation of vaginal birth, but as a defense of the mother’s bodily integrity. Reproductive justice would prevail, I offered, once the decision belonged to the mother, rather than to the health care provider, law enforcement officer or judge. But it was all our visitor could do not to shake his head in disgust.

I believe that the issues LSRJ has identified and pursued have workable solutions that are politically feasible. But meaningful engagement of future lawyers is so difficult because of a firewall of disgust that prevents them from taking positions. Nonetheless, university campuses are places to wrestle with ideas, and Mizzou LSRJ has a great opportunity to engage students and change minds.

Shandanette Molnar, George Washington University Law School

Before considering law school, I contemplated becoming a traditional midwife. After learning of the legal challenges that families and midwives face when attempting a more empowered birth experience, I decided that there was important legal work to be done and part of that work was my responsibility. In the meantime, I resolved to become a birth & postpartum doula and lactation educator and counselor so as to maintain my sense of self during law school.

As a maternal care, birth, and breastfeeding advocate, there are certainly times when I feel a disconnect between law school and the birth and reproductive justice movements. This is where LSRJ comes into the picture and precisely why campus-based reproductive justice work is so important. LSRJ bridges the gap between my outside and law school lives and repairs that schism I feel. With an LSRJ framework, I oftentimes engage with fellow classmates and raise awareness of reproductive justice issues. Through these conversations, our chapter highlights that reproductive justice is about much more than abortion. It is about the shackling of incarcerated pregnant women, mandatory Cesarean births, bans on vaginal births after Cesareans (VBACs), domestic violence, and access to information and quality healthcare across the full spectrum of a person’s reproductive life. When possible, I highlight the metarights because they are just so powerful – the right to have children, the right not to have children, and the right to parent the children we have with dignity.

Next week, our chapter will be co-hosting a feminist networking event for students. In an effort to give back to the law school community, I am hoping that I will be able to connect with a new chapter member or schoolmate – perhaps a 1L – and assure them that if they are interested in the work, reproductive justice and LSRJ provide many intersections to pursue meaningful work, both on and off campus.

Though I have often doubted my decision to attend law school, I feel confident in the decision I made now that I have 1L year behind me. Additionally, I think it will be easier to be a lawyer in midwifery school than it would have been to be a midwife in law school. Sure, I still desire to become midwife, but that’s how I’ll spend my fifties+ life. In the meantime, I am going to dedicate myself to combining my legal advocacy skills with a commitment to better birth, breastfeeding, and maternal care practices, as well as birth and reproductive justice. I hope a few of my amazingly talented law school comrades will join me as well.

African American women experience premature births and infant mortality at almost twice the rate of white American women.  When faced with this statistic, the reasons that automatically come to mind are because of socioeconomic inequalities regarding access to healthcare, prenatal care, and a healthy diet.  These inequalities frequently correlate with race.  However, there are increasing studies that point to race being a significant factor in premature births.  Just being a racial minority increases the likelihood of having a premature baby.

The documentary Unnatural Causes, When the Bough Breaks details how being a racial minority, and the everyday prejudices that one experiences, causes a considerable amount of stress to the body. (more…)

I have this image in my head of myself, what I look like, which doesn’t seem to change very quickly. At least, it hasn’t managed to keep up well with the advanced stages of pregnancy. I’ll walk past a mirror or reflective window and be stunned at what is looking back, all four chins and forty inches of midsection which haven’t yet been incorporated into my mental image. This lag in my brain feels understandable to me considering so little about my life (if not my body) has really changed. Last night, I came home after class, talked to friends, had dinner, checked my bank balance, watched some TV, and went to bed. This week, I met two huge deadlines, fought with my husband, filed papers for a client, gave relationship advice, turned in an assignment, felt betrayed by a friend, and had a heart-to-heart with my mother.

The majority of my obligations and my stressors have absolutely nothing to do with my being pregnant. However, I have been noticing lately that my interaction with others (and mirrors) has a lot to do with it. This may be because I’ve been winding down my responsibilities to prepare for the very large responsibility headed my way in early May – having less “roles” to play may mean that people see me primarily in the most obvious role. But I can’t help wondering if it’s more than that. For instance, someone told me the other day that she didn’t want to ask me for help because I was pregnant. I hesitate to think what level of my brain people believe has been shut down pending delivery. Further, she cut me slack because I was pregnant, not because I was busy or stressed or otherwise engaged. My assistance to her would have had zero connection to my pregnancy other than the dispensation I was unknowingly granted. And sometimes it feels like every dispensation these days, requested or otherwise, necessarily requires some nexus to my pregnancy.

I can’t stop thinking about Mrs T.* In 2009, she went before a judge as an undocumented immigrant HIV+ black woman convicted of falsifying documents and all he saw was “pregnant.” Ignoring sentencing guidelines, her date of release was scheduled to coincide with her due date to ensure compliance with anti-retroviral medication to prevent HIV transmission to the fetus. She was given an unnecessarily longer, more restrictive (and insulting) sentence by virtue of her gestational state. I don’t mean to imply any direct correlation to my situation is appropriate, especially when our only noticeably common traits are pregnancy and womanhood, but I do feel a lot more empathy considering our shared experience as the in(di)visible.

The next time you see a pregnant woman or girl, I strongly encourage you to embrace her wholeness. By this I mean realize she is everything at once – female, student, spouse, creditor, friend, attorney, taxpayer, editor, partner, swimmer, driver, homeowner, daughter, consumer, and everything else, as applicable. She is realistically subject to everything she normally has to deal with in addition to aches, fatigue, swelling, anxiety, shoe-tying, etc. Particularly in the later stages, when her womb has been effectively annexed by the fetus, the state, and by horribly unforgiving gravity, I implore you to remember that she is so much more than pregnant.

*Chapter Note: For more on Ms. T, and to share her story with your chapter, check out the RJ 101 Easy-Event-in-an-Envelope.

Sara Taylor

When most conversations involve birthing choices, people tend to polarize. A brief look at the history of midwifery explains why. Until the early 1800s in the United States of America, midwives were the primary maternal caregivers. Then medical school and trained doctors entered the playing field and the competition for patients spurred the purposeful disrepute of midwives everywhere. This has started a trend of antagonism between midwives and their cohorts and OB-GYNs and their allies. The antagonism has even infiltrated the midwifery community itself, pitting nurse-midwives against direct-entry midwives. (more…)