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.**

Rosie Wang, Resident Blogger (’14, Columbia Law School)

What do you get when you combine two cucumbers, five bananas, chocolate chip cookies, and over 50 condoms? Apparently a good deal of awkwardness.

Let’s back up. It was the day of my law school’s student organization fair and dozens of tables had been set up, laden with activities and treats to lure 1Ls to listen to our pitches. With beautiful sunny September weather, free beer abounding, and high spirits, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to relax and have fun. Arranged on our LSRJ table were goodie bags filled with homemade cookies, lip balm, condoms, lube, stickers, and cards with trivia on reproductive justice. For our activity, we had a simple competition: a race to see who could put a condom on a phallic piece of produce, correctly, and with the greatest speed. We thought it would be eye-catching and hilarious, and we indeed got many emails for our membership list and witnessed some truly impressive feats of speed. But we also encountered some unexpected reactions. I’m not talking about declining to race, preferring just to chat, or walking by with skeptical glances.

What was surprising was hearing multiple variations on the theme of “No thanks, what if someone puts the condom on really fast? You’d know they had a lot of practice!” This was always voiced with a tone of misgiving, as it was apparently a badge of disgrace to reveal you were experienced, rather than a neutral fact or even point of pride that you knew how to practice safe sex. Sure, it’s understandable that one might be concerned with what others would glean from your private life simply by witnessing how you handle a cucumber. People have different comfort levels, and the whole point of reproductive justice is that everyone’s own sexual expression is their own choice. However, when it comes to creating an association of slut shaming, I have to wonder at the strange society we live in where sex as an idea is omnipresent, glorified, and commodified, and yet to a significant extent, people shy away from admitting they have it or talking about the important logistics of it.

However, open dialogue is crucial because the statistics are sobering. Fifty-five million dollars of federal funding will go towards abstinence-only education in 2012. Half of the 18.9 million new cases of STIs each year are made up of 15 to 24 year olds although they only represent a quarter of the sexually active population. Thirty-one percent of new HIV infections each year are made up of 13 to 29 year olds. And 39.8% of high school students did not use a condom the last time they had intercourse. If law students can’t shed the associations of sex and shame, how can we shape society to make it safer for young people who don’t have the benefit of our education, years, and experience?

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

Help me understand this.  Reproductive rights and women’s rights in general have been the focus for certain groups in certain areas of government.  And these groups have taken a certain stance on these rights.  It would seem that now, more than ever, women and those concerned for the realization of reproductive justice need to work harder than ever to ensure that barriers aren’t placed between people and their access to the reproductive services they need.  How then can I be surrounded by so much complacency?  How can students attending law school on a famously progressive campus shrug their shoulders at the mention of a student group named Law Students for Reproductive Justice?  I want to believe that their shrugs are due to the fact that prior to law school they worked for non-profits, politicians, and national organizations whose top priority was protecting reproductive freedoms.  Therefore they’re shrugging, rather than a sign of complacency, is more of a “preaching to the choir” response by an old friend of RJ.  But seriously, who am I kidding.  This isn’t the likely backstory.  More likely, I think, is that they are shrugging not because of their tireless efforts working in the trenches but because of their own complacency with the status quo and perhaps a slight fear of coming across as too gunner-y by sounding off at their 1L events about RJ.

Call it motherly instincts, but my gut reaction to our school’s lack of outspoken, enthusiastic reproductive rights and justice advocates has caused me to worry about the future for my young classmates.  Granted, it is only week five of school.  And granted we are in Oregon, a state that for the most part has avoided legislation that places major obstacles between people and their realization of RJ.  But I’m of the opinion that our state dodging the bullet, so to speak, wasn’t accidental; it was the result of diligent work by countless advocates.  And that was precisely what I was hoping to recruit and help shape in our LSRJ chapter this year: diligent RJ advocates.  So, let’s do this 1Ls, let’s show up and start working…because we still have lots of work to do!

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.

Catrina Otonoga, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

Each spring, my elementary school, like elementary schools across the country, had field day. A day where the 1^st through 5^th graders with innate talent to run fast, treat tug-o-war like life or death, and leap through obstacle courses like mini-Olympians, shine. I wanted so badly to be one of those kids, to run fast, “like Greg”, arguably the fastest kid in my class, who went on to excel in high-school sports and field letters from football recruiters across the country. Instead, I had short, spindly legs, thick glasses, and barely the muscle definition to allow me to walk properly. My grandfather wouldn’t let me carry an umbrella on a blustery day for fear I’d blow away with the wind.

“Not everyone is good at everything, not everyone can have everything,” my mother told me. Sometimes hard word doesn’t pay off, sometimes you just aren’t meant to be a fast runner, or an astronaut, or the President. But sometimes it does, and those are the things I was told to focus on. Instead of struggling to be good at everything, trying to be spectacularly awesome at one thing that makes me tick.

Now, the dialogue has changed. Society, feminism, and sometimes even well meaning family and friends are pulling women in opposing directions. And, as I approach the beginning of my 3L year, where applying for jobs and starting my life outside academia is knocking on my door, I feel it more than ever. The push to have an amazing career, get married, buy a house and also to travel, see the world, not compromise. The pressure to Have. It. All. Even in a world where we are increasingly being told that having it all, isn’t going to happen. Not with these institutions, not among this systemic culture of disadvantaging women and annihilating our path to meaningful choice. Not without some serious change. And even when we see women who have finally reached that pinnacle, they distance themselves from the history of struggle and sacrifice that they built their education, careers, and ability to achieve balance on.

Increasingly, I’m unsure of what I want for myself; how many kids I want to have, if I want to own a home, if I want to live in Bangladesh and help provide women with micro financing, if I want to be a mother, a conventional lawyer, a U.S. citizen, at all.

What I do know, is that I want to live a passionate life. To work for a cause I’m passionate about, and to surround myself with people who not only work passionately, but live their lives with laughter and tears and friendship at their core. It’s an experience I have gotten a taste of in my time at LSRJ. I have seen passionate women who are growing and raising their families, expanding their careers, pushing through law school, struggling with what it means to be a woman, a friend, a partner and an advocate, and living lives of growth and intention. In a political climate where our identities as women are under scrutiny, my internship at LSRJ has been shelter from the storm—a shelter full of balloons, Friday Night Lights, dialogue, and affirmation. And, as I begin to wrap up my time here it is a way of thinking and living that I’m sure will carry me through my final year of law school, down whatever path I find myself on, and through the obstacles that I’m sure will be there.

So thanks, Mama LSRJ for giving me shelter.

Candace Gibson, University of Utah College of Law

It has been a whirlwind ride for me as a 3L.  Last summer, when I was planning my 3L year, I wasn’t thinking of starting a LSRJ chapter.  However, I became convinced by one of my mentors to start one. Now, I am sad to leave the U of U Law Students for Reproductive Justice Chapter.

We’ve had a great year. Unlike some of our sister chapters in the Mountain West, we did not have any bureaucratic obstacles to fight and so far, we have gained the respect of our student body and of the other student organizations.  Maybe, we’ll know we have arrived when there is a pro-life law students group on our campus.  We planned and co-hosted five panels, the topics ranged from academic scholarship in reproductive rights to domestic violence in immigrant communities to the valuable contributions of medical practitioners.  We made condom kits twice to help the HIV Prevention Program at the Utah Pride Center and we created a presentation around the legal issues that some Latina adolescents face in Salt Lake City.  We also tabled the months of October and November on various RJ topics.  It was a fun but exhausting year!

All of this could not have been done without the energy and work of our 2011-2012 board who stepped up when they needed to and told me that they were too exhausted to do another thing.   These moments remind me that when you are doing social justice work you have to set some boundaries or else you will be exhausted and no longer useful to your community or your movement.

The other important lesson I am learning is that we always need to mentor.  Often, as adults either pursuing education or because we are still getting our act together, we never think of ourselves as mentors but as mentees.  We need to keep thinking as chapter leaders and as members that we not only mentor during a transition meeting and after we have left, but that we are mentoring while we are leading our chapters and are mentored by our other chapter members.   As a movement, we need to keep mentoring so that we never become irrelevant or worse, we end up erasing the efforts of younger members by saying they aren’t doing anything. (I’m sure you have all heard about the comments made by older feminists who think that we younger feminists are only sitting on their laurels and twiddling our thumbs.)

Aside from these serious thoughts, I want you all to wish next year’s U of U Law Students for Reproductive Justice Chapter board the best of luck.  I’m thinking they will certainly put us one step closer to having our archrival, Law Students for the Right to Life, on campus.

This year, OULSRJ was a new student group, so initially we were concerned with visibility and navigating unfamiliar bureaucratic processes. Since our student body leans more conservative, I was also secretly concerned that my co-chair and I would be the only law students interested in the group. I was happily proved wrong though. At our first meeting, we introduced people to the reproductive justice framework and elected officers. We had more than enough people to fill all six positions that we’d created!

We knew we needed to be strategic with the events we planned. Hosting an event like a sex pleasure workshop was probably going to cause more harm than good four our reputation at least for the first year we existed. Instead we wanted to focus on topics that are less controversial but still important.

In February we were honored to have Lynn Paltrow of National Advocates for Pregnant Women and Julie Burkhart of Trust Women speak at an event titled Pro-Life or Pro-Lives. Paltrow’s discussion of how fetal rights claims can also harm women seeking to carry their pregnancy to term resonated with at least one student who was undecided about the issue. My only regret is that we did not reach out enough to the more conservative groups at school.

The Women’s and Gender Studies department at the University of Oklahoma also hosted a regional conference on reproductive justice for the first time in February. There were about 200 attendees from Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and other states. Topics included sexual assault, religion and reproductive justice, and the LGBTQ movement and reproductive justice.  This conference exposed attendees to the reproductive justice framework and showcased a wide variety of topics.  Many students in Middle America do not have the money or time to travel halfway across the country to conferences on the coasts, so it was nice to have these large-scale conversations on our own campus.

We also had Ryan Keisel of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma speak about reproductive rights-related legislation. The main topic was personhood since it seems like advocates are trying to enact this policy in Oklahoma from all possible angles. Some people also shared their individual experiences with reproductive rights restrictions in Oklahoma and how the laws affected the health care they received. To me, these conversations are more productive than the traditional ones we often have that involve pro-choice rhetoric. OU LSRJ tried to steer clear of phrases like “get your laws off my body” or “get your religion off my body” not only because critiques of “choice” are central to the reproductive justice framework, but also because those sentiments just don’t resonate with folks here.

As we begin planning for next year, I want to remember our successes and our failures. Next year I’d like to concentrate on meeting more frequently and working with other student groups, while still focusing on how to message reproductive justice issues in a state that identifies predominantly as pro-faith and pro-life.

Joanne Caceres, Harvard Law School

What a year it’s been. In the fall our LSRJ was thinking about what most campus organizations struggle with: how do we recruit, train and retain students to our cause? Partially inspired by the 1in3 Campaign, we started the year with a Speak Out Week, where we encouraged the men and women of Harvard Law School and the Boston Area to share their reproductive health stories. In addition, we hosted events that focused on a specific community and their stake in the pro-choice movement. One such event was “Bro-Choice,” which was geared towards the men at Harvard.

Bro-Choice was a huge success and affirmed our belief that men can play a role in the reproductive justice movement, and it is something our organization will continue to expand upon in the future.

Equally exciting this year was Obama’s announcement whereby religious exemptions for insurance mandates requiring access to $0 co-pay contraceptives would only apply narrowly. The following conservative backlash brought women’s health to the forefront of the national conversation. LSRJ’s very own Sandra Fluke, from Georgetown, testified to the nation on the importance of contraceptive coverage.

Our annual Sex Week took place shortly after Fluke’s testimony, amid the controversy firestorm (thanks to a radio personality who will not be named). Our events included academic legal topics related to sex, including Affirmative Consent and the Law with Judge Nancy Gertner, and more lighthearted and social events, including our annual Sex Trivia event. Perhaps unsurprisingly, our most controversial event of the week was a sexual pleasure workshop entitled “Sex Positivity and SlutPride: Sex Tips for a Modern World from Good Vibrations”. The event drew the ire of people for many reasons, but most notably for the use of the word “slut.” Although much of the criticism that surfaced was of a “gotcha” variety, arguing that women’s groups can’t have it “both ways” with the use of the word—it was valuable in that it encouraged an open discussion of feminist arguments both for and against reclaiming a word that has historically been used to dehumanize and degrade women (you can see HLSRJ’s formal press release here).

As we prepare for the rest of the year, I wonder what opportunities and challenges lay ahead. How much of this year’s general election will become about women’s health issues? How can we educate more men and women around this issue? We may not have all the answers now, but HLSRJ will be here, keeping the conversation going.

Susy Prochazka, Thomas Jefferson School of Law

For the lonely hearts, the coupled hearts, and all hearts in between this Valentine’s Day, our chapter arranged a lecture on the history of human sexuality and the ongoing effects of racism, sexism, and homophobia on sexual expression. Ms. Lea, the owner of a local sexuality boutique and sociological scholar, prepared a discussion on the lingering negative stereotypes surrounding a woman’s sexuality, especially where that sexuality does not conform to a white, hetero-normative standard.

Understandably so, the discussion detoured from a historical perspective into the more recent hardships that women face in exercising their right to a healthy and autonomous sexuality. One member of our chapter posed the question, “How will the recent obstacles to contraception coverage affect women’s sexuality?” Building on a religious liberty platform, the campaign by US Bishops forced the White House to compromise on insuring contraception. We voiced our fears that forcing women to rely on their employers for coverage will further restrict timely access to birth control. A woman’s sexual health will be dependent on her employer’s personal beliefs and opinions, an unacceptably restrictive limitation, in our eyes.

Some of the most vociferous opposition to the coverage of contraceptives stem from conservative religious organizations. However, there are statistics that 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women use a method of contraception banned by these same US bishops. The bishops represent the views of very few people other than themselves. One of our members is a devout Catholic and an active participant with Catholics for Choice. She brought these statistics to our attention and this led to a fiery debate about the failure of the separation of Church and State.

In the end, our discussion gave us resolve to create an event to emphasize the fact that religion and contraceptives can co-exist. Our school is fairly conservative, both politically and religiously, and we seek to ensure a place for contraceptives and frank discussion on campus.

To accomplish this, our LSRJ chapter has teamed up with the Jewish Students Association and Christian Law Society to host an event addressing the dissonance between religion and contraceptives, a conflict that is being pushed to the forefront.

Our Valentine’s Day event was a huge success. It not only provided a background to the history of oppression of sexuality, but it also addressed the obstacles that very recent legislation continues to pose.