Josie Sustaire, Resident Blogger (’14, University of Oregon School of Law)

I am a law student at the University of Oregon but this weekend I ventured out of the northwest and attended LSRJ’s northeast regional conference at Harvard Law, hosted by the Harvard Law Students for Reproductive Justice.  At the conference, one of the panels was entitled RJ and Religion: Whose Conscience Matters?  The speakers all did a wonderful job of unraveling the complexities of reproductive justice issues through a religious lens. 

The first speaker from Mergerwatch Project enlightened me on the issues that arise from a hospital’s merger with a religious affiliated organization.  Her talk was great!  But I most identified with the last two speakers from Catholics for Choice and a Unitarian Universalist minister.  Due to my Catholic upbringing I have both the blessing and the curse of the religion’s teachings.  A baptized and confirmed Catholic, I have an understanding of the Bible that many others don’t have and less useful perhaps, I know the words to a number of hymnals and know when to kneel and make the sign of the holy trinity during mass.  One of the “curses” of being a Catholic, for me, was being brought up to believe that a woman who exercises her right not to have children (by way of an abortion or use of EC like Plan B) is killing a life and must be excommunicated.  Additionally, the Catholic teachings taught me that sex was a dirty word and that the only intercourse should be between a husband (a man) and his wife (a woman) in their marital bed…for the sole purpose of procreating.  This all got complicated for me during my teen years.  You see, I began to feel as though the religion was incompatible with my personal beliefs.  I embraced my sexuality and felt that it was something that didn’t belong solely to the married hetero man and woman.  I struggled, trying out different churches, searching for one that I better identified with.  I didn’t find the elusive church that I longed for but I did find fellowship.  First, it was among my theater friends in high school and then with my fellow nerdy English majors, and finally, alongside other LSRJ warriors.

What I have discovered and what the speakers at the LSRJ conference highlighted is that reproductive justice doesn’t have to conflict with your religion.  Rather, RJ can exist in harmony with your faith.  The speakers reiterated something that most folks already acknowledge – religious leaders, even though they may say they are, are not always speaking for their constituents.  This is particularly true for Catholic bishops (Only 7% of Catholic voters believe strongly that Catholics have an obligation to vote only for candidates who are recommended by the Catholic bishops).

I am no longer a practicing Catholic but I don’t see this as a sad ending to the story of my religious quest.  I see this as a moment of personal recognition.  I recognized as a young adult that Catholicism did not align with my personal needs or beliefs.  It was later in adulthood that I came to realized that organized religion in general did not agree with my faith.  My story is personal and my story is a happy story.  I feel blessed to have been raised in a Catholic environment; there are so many good things that came from it.  However, I also feel blessed to have realized at a fairly young age what did and did not work for me when it came to religion and faith.  Having engaged in self-discovery, I feel better prepared to speak to others about RJ issues through a religious/faith-based lens and understand the struggles that some folks feel when navigating the worlds of RJ and religion.  I hope that along with the speakers that I met today, I can help others to understand that they don’t have to choose religion or RJ but can embrace both comfortably knowing they are not alone. 

The following are the second part of condensed remarks given by Law Students for Reproductive Justice Fellow Laura Nixon on October 6, 2012 at William & Mary School of Law’s Reproductive Justice Symposium, sponsored by their Initiative on Gender, Sexuality, and the Law. Read the first part here.

Now, I want to turn to addressing some specific barriers to reproductive justice for transgender people. I want to ground this conversation in the reality that transgender people have sexual partners who are men or women  – and that when we make blanket assumptions about sexual behavior based on gender identity and sexual orientation, we may miss reproductive health issues that are important to members of our community.

The National Center for Transgender Equality has created an excellent fact sheet showing us some of the important reproductive healthcare issues for transgender people. Foremost of these issues is how often transgender people are denied healthcare by providers outright – in national surveys, somewhere between 19 to 27 percent of transgender people report having this experience.  Related to refusal of care, is how often transgender people must educate their healthcare providers about appropriate clinical care and the paucity of adequate information about sexual health available to transgender people.  With regard to reproductive health, many transgender men who have sex with men report being more concerned about unintended pregnancy than sexually transmitted infections, even as they may be at high risk for both.  Additionally, requirements that people undergo sex reassignment surgery before being allowed to change the gender marker on their identity documents (such as driver’s licenses or birth certificates) essentially requires that they be sterilized in order to obtain these correct documents – which should be a profound concern for LGBT and reproductive justice advocates.

With respect to the experiences of transgender people, an important question to ask is: are our language choices in the reproductive health, rights, and justice movements drawing people in or are we pushing people out? In terms of reproductive health care, Dean Spade, a trans legal scholar and activist has proposed some ideas about how anyone working in the health field can change the language they use, so that transgender people know that their needs are being considered, met, and welcomed. In terms of reproductive rights and justice movement-building, we have heard a lot about the “war on women” over the past year, given the number of unprecedented legislative attacks on reproductive freedom.  Sometimes in these discussions, we may have heard people say something to the effect of “Only people with vaginas should be deciding these issues!”  This is a tongue-in-cheek way to demand that people who are most affected by these attacks on reproductive freedom be heard on these issues, and be the decision-makers in their own reproductive lives.  However, it’s worth thinking a little more deeply about how those statements may box out transgender people from the movement and communicate that they don’t have a voice in these issues because people who are women may or may not have vaginas.  In the same way the Dean Spade has suggested that we shift our language about reproductive anatomy in the healthcare setting, we must think about our language choices in reproductive rights and justice movement-building so that our work truly reflects the needs and experiences of all members of our community.

I hope the information and research that I have shared today shows us why harmful restrictions on contraception and abortion care affect LGBT people and how we can build healthcare systems and movements that are really responsive to the reality of LGBT peoples’ sexual and reproductive experiences.  Our LGBT rights and reproductive health, rights, and justice movements have strong  – not just theoretical – connections.  Let’s continue to work together to build a better world!

The following is part one of condensed remarks given by Law Students for Reproductive Justice Fellow Laura Nixon on October 6, 2012 at William & Mary School of Law’s Reproductive Justice Symposium, sponsored by their Initiative on Gender, Sexuality, and the Law. Stay tuned for part two tomorrow!

The National Center for Lesbian Rights has been concerned about issues of reproductive health and rights since our founding – and we are grateful to the reproductive justice movement for developing new frameworks to think about issues at the intersection of reproduction and sexuality.  Reproductive justice is the right to have children, the right to not have children, and the right to parent the children we have. In fact, the right to have children and to parent the children formed the basis of the founding of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. We were founded in 1977 because many lesbian mothers were losing custody of their children because of their sexual orientation.  Seeing this desperate need, Donna Hitchens – a law student like many of you here today — decided to start the Lesbian Rights Project which eventually grew into the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

My presentation today will touch on the right to have children and to parent the children we have.  I will directly address the right not have children, and why issues of access to contraception, emergency contraception, and abortion care have a big impact on the LGBT community – issues that has been raised by a number of activists and organizations working in these two movements.  Then, I will describe some specific barriers to reproductive justice for transgender people, and ask us to consider how our LGBT rights movement and reproductive justice movements can be stronger allies in our fights for social change.

The right to have children encompasses situations that LGBT people are already, tragically familiar with — discriminatory state adoption statutes, courts that fail to recognize non-biological parents as full and equal parents, and access to affordable reproductive technologies.  The right to have children also requires us to consider issues we may believe are outside of LGBT rights, but also implicate the right to have children, such as the effect of family caps on women in poverty. Family caps impact children in poverty by denying them critical support for their health and well-being – and may have the effect of incentivizing abortion for poor women subject to this policy.  It is a profound reproductive injustice for coercive state policies to force people to make these kinds of decisions about having children.

The right to parent the children we have includes if and how same-sex parents are placed on the birth certificates of their children, access to second-parent adoptions, how these parental rights travel across state lines, and how parental rights play out in the case of separation or divorce.  The right to parent the children we have also includes combating how the child welfare system systemically punishes poor women of color struggling to raise their children and the devastating impact of child welfare system and immigration, where it has recently been revealed that more than 5,000 children have had the traumatic experience of being placed into foster care while their parents are subject to deportation proceedings.

The right not to have children – access to contraception, emergency contraception, and abortion care – are the focus of my presentation today.  The LGBT rights movement and the reproductive rights and justice movements have strong  – not just legal and theoretical – connections to one another in this area for several reasons that law professor Ruthann Robson has expertly identified in this op-ed.  First, there is a devastating prevalence of rape and sexual assault in the United States, which includes an incredibly high number of lesbians who are raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Secondly, our sexual identity may not always align with our sexual behavior.  For example, surveys have consistently shown that many lesbians have a history of sexual contact with men, and that in many of those encounters, no condom was used, thus increasing the likelihood of an unintended pregnancy.  Finally, public health research has shown us that queer youth are uniquely susceptible to unintended pregnancy.  In fact, several studies have documented that young lesbians are two to ten times more likely to become pregnant than their heterosexual counterparts for a number of reasons that speak to how vulnerable queer youth are to the inadequacies of abstinence-only sex education, sexual abuse and/or substance abuse, homelessness, and the kind of surveillance and harassment that may lead young lesbians to have unprotected heterosexual sex in order to hide their sexuality.

**Laura’s remaining remarks, detailing barriers to reproductive justice for transgender individuals, will be posted tomorrow.**

Catrina Otonoga, Case Western Reserve 

Across the United States, the reproductive justice movement is in a face-off. We’re facing off with our opposition on just how much legislation they can push at us, before we shove them back. We’re facing off on how far their messaging can go, before we finally go father. But most of all, we’re facing off against ourselves.

Even in the Midwest, generally known for our non-offensive accents, cornfields, and ability to get along with most everyone – we couldn’t always agree on just what issues our region was facing, whether we were red, blue or purple, or how to address the myriad of issues being thrown our way by opposition. In our afternoon plenary, this thought was manifested further. CoreAlign gave figures and facts to assumptions and showed us just how deep the divides are within the movement.

From Boston to DC, Atlanta to the Bay, the divides on how to approach the movement, the work, and the balances of needs and long-term change are scattered across the spectrum. But one consistency remains; we fail at taking big risks. While our opposition is great at flashy, pithy banners full of half (or less than half) truths, we’re struggling to find a way to please everyone. The RJ movement, and each of us in it, has to break free of habit and find ourselves in a place a little less comfortable, a little more risky, a lot more open to new dialogues, and a little closer to creating a whole new narrative.

JoAnna Smith, Emory

The last session of the weekend called “Where Do We Go From Here? The Future of Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice,” challenged all of us to think about the history of the reproductive justice community, to analyze our successes and, more importantly, the bad habits we have formed, and to think critically about how to move the conversation forward.

One of the speakers was Ms. Sujatha Jesudason, the Director of CoreAlign Initiative.  CoreAlign did a study to analyze what was working and what needed to be improved in the RJ community. They found that the movement was extremely well-funded, but that we lack cohesive messaging, inspiring leaders and goals, and actions that are proactive rather than reactive. Instead of looking at the issues of rights, justice, and health as separate issues to be addressed by different experts, we needed to find ways to make connections, share resources, and to focus on RJ heroes rather than victims.

I thought back to an exercise we did the first day where we were asked to design a program around a reproductive justice topic. Many of us who were well-versed on abortion-bans, defunding of Planned Parenthood, and vaginal ultrasounds struggled with the assignment because we had never thought about some of the other RJ issues out there. Even those who had thought about them, had never before considered out to communicate them to a broader audience and in a way that included the voices of those RJ impacts the most.

I also thought about the session I attended on chapter strategic planning. I attended but was skeptical that a campus club like mine would benefit much from a strategic plan; it seemed too formal for what we were. But after hearing Ms. Jesudason talk about how the RJ movement is doomed to stagnation and repetition of bad habits without close self-examination and a plan for success, I am a convert.

I pledge (and I challenge you to pledge) to examine how my organization is doing RJ work. Do we sacrifice a broader message in the name of an easy event? Could we reach a more diverse group of people by spending more time coalition building on campus and in the community? Can we acknowledge the successes of those who came before us while doing something different, better, more successful?

I am so excited to get back to campus this fall to get started on our strategic plan. I wish you good luck on yours!

Rosie Wang, Columbia

Sullivan and Cromwell makes it possible to own a beautiful apartment on the East River if you make partner. Cravath gives you two computer screens to double the documents you can absorb in a glance. Wachtell cares primarily about your grades and rank. Little tidbits about firms and firm life imperceptibly filtered into my knowledge by the end of 1L year with little to no effort on my part. If only the material in my casebooks functioned on the same osmosis-type learning process. Attending a school known for setting students on a well-oiled track to BigLaw, I found information about firm recruiting inescapable, but heard much less talk about what exactly happens with public interest minded law students and on what timeline. Lucky for me, the LSRJ Leadership Institute comes to the rescue.

In a workshop appropriately titled “Choose Your Own Adventure,” we attendees got to pick the brains of four LSRJ alums with fellowships galore. Hearing them share their stories and wisdom, I realized they were answering questions, confirming hunches, and assuaging worries that I didn’t even know that I had. Some quick highlights:

• If you suspect that you might not be a great fit for a fellowship, let them decide that, not you! Peruse the bios of their current fellows to glean what it is they want.
• Take the bar in the state you’d like to end up in. Even if that isn’t where you actually end up, this usually won’t preclude you from work if you’re not appearing in court.
• Start thinking about fellowships a year in advance, especially to build relationships if you’re in pursuit of a project-based fellowship.
• Going into firm work for a few years is indeed good training and does not necessarily pose a hurdle to transitioning to public interest.
• Don’t worry so much about your resume, do what you’d be doing anyway.

This last point, I think touches on the most valuable takeaway of all: Be able to trust your passion, be patient and open to surprising roads it may take you down. Following your heart is a platitude perhaps rendered cheesy by repetition in other times and contexts. However, it really resonated with me, hearing Lillian, Dipti, Amanda, and Erin speak about how the very different paths they took to doing work they were passionate about – some of them direct and with a specific goal at the outset, some of them meandering and full of phases of  further self-discovery, and many of them leading to unexpected geographical and strategic areas.  They also told us to insulate ourselves, for our own emotional and mental health, from the barrage of news and stresses radiating from the firm job hunt, which operated on a different timeline. As my both my Facebook newsfeed and inbox have been brimming with Early Interview Program messages, this was a message I needed to hear, and suspect that others do too. It’s a message that I’m sure it can’t hurt to have reiterated continually, and the mentors and support networks of present and future LSRJ members are here to help.

Ash Moore, University of Oklahoma

The Leadership Institute just became a memory. After two days of talking about reproductive health, rights, and justice we are heading back to our home schools carrying with us what we learned about the issues and policies.

As I was waiting to board my plane (wearing my new LSRJ shirt), a soon to be 1L came up to me and asked, “so what, exactly, does reproductive justice mean? Like, you care about abortions and stuff?”

I couldn’t help but smile. I gave her the one-minute-or-less elevator speech I practiced in a workshop earlier today, wrote down my contact information, and the contact information for a California chapter leader I met this weekend. When she walked away, I realized I had learned so much more this weekend than the status of abortion laws in different states.

The LI spent most of the weekend teaching us universal leadership and messaging skills. It was truly one of the most amazing programs I’ve ever experienced. The national organization’s back seat approach to the individual chapters’ agenda and structure speaks volumes about their faith in their members. While it’s scary to be imbued with so much responsibility, there are so many amazing tools and resources available not only from the national organization, but from fellow chapters as well.

It’s nice to know you’re never alone. Especially when you’re leaving a place of acceptance and open discussion, and going back to a place that recently passed draconian laws to restrict a woman’s control over her own body.

Catrina Otonoga, Case Western Reserve University

From the first moments of meeting the LI attendees at the hotel, until the last drinks of the day, there was a flurry of hugs being passed around the conference. Old acquaintances and friends from home schools and across the country were meeting up sharing stories, and bonding – like partners, and sisters. Although a few men, who offered great and much needed perspective throughout the day, joined us, the feeling of sisterhood was palpable.

Women began comparing their chapters to their experiences in a sorority, and were concerned with how to create a lasting legacy, recruitment of new 1L “pledge classes”, and making sure the work they had begun was continued long after their journey though the law school. The vibrancy and energy of being surrounded by so many people, with so many viewpoints and ideas was overwhelming. But, underneath each of those ideas, was the knowledge that here in front of you was your ally, your sister, your kindred spirit that you could turn to throughout not only the LI and law school, but far into the future.

But, don’t let all this talk of sisterhood fool you. Each of the women was passionate about integrating more and more voices to the movement – men, women of color, people who identify as LGBTQ, people with lived experiences in poverty, immigration… the list went on and on. RJ is far more than just a women’s movement or a women’s issue, and the people of LSRJ recognize that more and more each time we convene with each other. The feeling of sisterhood, is not just that shared between women, but a bond shared between people who are so passionate, so invigorated by working toward shared goals that there is nothing you can do except smile, hug and know that the legacy will be there, building upon itself, riding waves of ups and downs, for years.

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.

Ash Moore, University of Oklahoma College of Law

When I signed up for this weekend, I wasn’t too sure I was going to enjoy it. From the first moment I stepped in to the LSRJ Leadership Institute, I knew I was in for a bit of a culture shock. People were throwing around the “f” word like it was perfectly acceptable language.

I’m talking about “feminism,” of course. That word scares folks in Oklahoma and surrounding states. Everyone gets an immediate picture of bra-burning, man-hating, bleeding-heart liberal vegans. And I have to admit, I came here with some preconceptions as well. Even I was expecting a much higher vegan attendance (there’s only one here).

It was really refreshing to see a room full of people from different backgrounds coming together and civilly talking about reproductive issues (and it ain’t all about abortion folks. I know, color me surprised). But even in this group, we had disagreements over the issues. Astonishingly though, there was no yelling and, as far as I know, no one was offended. It was truly amazing to have an open, honest, discourse about these issues and not be vilified. Day one is at an end, and I can’t wait for day two.