Emily T. Wolf, Vice-President, Fordham Law Students for Reproductive Justice

This blog is part of the #HERvotes blog carnival.

Fordham University is a Jesuit school.  Because of this, students are not able to get birth control prescribed to them at the on-campus health centers.  Fordham LSRJ wanted to provide Fordham students with a way to have access to doctors and birth control prescriptions.  Here’s how we did it:

Step One:  Identify a Specific Problem

The problem that we chose to tackle was the fact that there was no notice on the health center’s website that students would not be able to receive standard health care.  There was no information that stated the health center is not able to prescribe birth control.  Under the heading “Women’s Health,” the site stated, “routine gynecological exams are available.”  If you searched further, you would find a question under the FAQs about scheduling a gynecological exam with some additional language:

“Remember, Fordham University is a Catholic and Jesuit University. As such, the physicians, nurse practitioners, and staff of the Health Center abide by the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.  Those interested in these directives can read them, usccb.org/about/doctrine/ethical-and-religious-directives/ (You will leave this website.)”

If you follow that link, you will need to click on the 43 page document, and read it.  If you do a search for “contraception,” “birth control,” or “condom,” you will find zero matches within the document.  If you search for “contraceptive,” you will find three matches, including text that states, “Catholic health institutions may not promote or condone contraceptive practices but should provide, for married couples and the medical staff who counsel them, instruction both about the Church’s teaching on responsible parenthood and in methods of natural family planning.”

This was sufficiently vague and hidden such that students were not likely to be aware of this practice.  It does not state that Fordham University forbids its nurse practitioners from prescribing birth control at its on-campus health centers.  It is especially confusing given other language on the website that explains the health insurance offered by Fordham is required by New York law to cover birth control prescriptions.  So students who need birth control will need to go to a different health care provider and incur additional costs.

Fordham LSRJ spoke to the Director of Student Health Services at Fordham, who explained that there is a medical exception to these birth control directives.  So, theoretically, students who have health reasons for which birth control is standard treatment should be able to get a birth control prescription.  However, this is not the case.  We have information from many students who went to the health center with documented medical reasons to be on prescription contraceptives (endometriosis, ovarian cysts, dysmenorrhea) and were denied birth control.  We have not heard from any student who was prescribed hormonal contraceptives for any reason.

Step Two:  Identify Solutions

Our first solution was to ask the health center to update the website to reflect that students could not receive birth control prescriptions at Fordham.  This sounded easy and entirely reasonable!  We thought that it was a simple oversight on Fordham’s part not to include this information on their website.  We were wrong.

We began by writing a letter to the president of the University in October, explaining the situation and how it could be resolved.  We made this request from the position of consumers of Fordham’s health insurance looking for information, rather than as a group making demands.  We explained that adequate notice of Fordham’s policies were imperative in order to allow students to make the best decision regarding their health care.

We received an answer to our letter about two weeks after we sent it.  The response was basically that the University would look into making the communications and policies more clear.  (The website was eventually updated on January 23.)   Our follow-up questions to where these policies exist were met with a vague response stating the policy is reflected in the mission and tradition of the University.

At this point, we wanted to do something to draw attention to the issue and also something to help provide health care to the students who needed it.  And so we arrived at our next solution:  host a birth control clinic on or near campus!

Step Three:  Use the Resources in the Reproductive Justice Community to Make It Happen

Of course, we didn’t know exactly where to start.  We began by contacting the national LSRJ office, as well as some of our professors for names of doctors or nurse practitioners who would be willing to help us.  We were eventually put into contact with the amazing Institute for Family Health here in New York.  The doctors there were more than willing to come to Fordham to put on a clinic that would provide health care access to students.  They were also able to do this at no cost, which was a great help, since Fordham had asked us not to use any University funds for this event.

We also held our event just off campus at the New York Institute of Technology.  Fordham would not allow this event on campus.  NYIT was generous to provide us with a perfect space for the clinic without cost.

So we had an idea for an event (check), event space (check), doctors to prescribe birth control and answer questions (check), food (check – paid for by an anonymous donor), and prizes for reproductive rights jeopardy (check – thanks LSRJ!).  Now we just needed to let people know about the event.  We went to the press, submitting dozens of tips to any news source we could think of, which ended up being very successful.  The attention from the press led to even more support for our event, and we were able to get literature and support from other reproductive rights organizations, such as NARAL and Catholics for Choice.

Ginormous event poster - check! Photo of Leila and Emily in our lovely cafeteria courtesy of Bridgette.

During the event-planning process we ran into some roadblocks.  We weren’t able to put up posters around the law school advertising the event (our posters were not approved by Student Affairs), so we emailed the student body and asked students to put up mini-posters on their lockers that line the hallways of the law school.  We got an amazing response to this, and soon the school was full of posters anyway.  We also had some difficulties with our first space that we rented for the clinic.  We chose a space in a building just off campus that housed several floors of Fordham classrooms.  We thought that it would be convenient since students were already familiar with the space.  After we signed a rental contract, the organization refused to let us use the space. This was frustrating, and meant a time-consuming scramble for a new space, but we got it done.

So, how did it go?

Our birth control clinic and sexual health fair was a huge success!  Over one hundred people came to support us and forty women received birth control prescriptions.  The students who came engaged in small discussions around the room, and it was great to see many of the issues surrounding birth control at Fordham being hashed out.  It was also amazing to provide answers to questions that students had about Fordham policies or anything else, and to direct students to other resources when we did not know the answers.  We were so happy to have helped these students receive health care that they may not have received otherwise.

Lots of quality discussion! Photo courtesy of Fordham Observer.

Our event drew some local and national attention, largely due to the timing of the Department of Health and Human Services debating whether to extend the religious exemption to include religious universities in November and determining against this decision this January.  Our event was discussed in diverse media sources, such as Fox News, the New York Times, the Fordham Observer (here and here), Jezebel, RH Reality Check (here and here and here for podcast), Above the Law, the New York Daily News, Slate, the Huffington Post, the Daily Mail, and the National Catholic Register, among others.  We were interviewed for some of these publications, but not all.  In some cases, the authors of the articles misunderstood our event, and we made an effort to contact those authors to correct them in order to ensure our message was clear.  It was really interesting to read about our event in these sources, and to read the many (positive and negative) comments generated by those articles.

Bridgette being interviewed by Fox News. Photo courtesy of Emily.

We had our event attendees fill out a brief exit survey, which was helpful in determining how many people attended and the issues that mattered to them.  We received a lot of positive feedback from the students who attended, and got some great ideas for future birth control events.  For example, we heard several comments asking for “more diverse types and sizes of condoms” and “guest speakers for next time.”  My personal favorite piece of feedback was from an undergraduate who stated she said, “I posted about the event on my Facebook wall, and then got a message from my father, telling me to ‘grow up.’  Being conscious about my sexual health is growing up!”

This January, the University did update the website to address some of our concerns about the lack of clarity on Fordham’s policy.  We are glad that some progress was made.  The website now discusses birth control in two places – once in the FAQs and once in the Women’s Health Care section, where it is explicitly stated that “[n]either contraceptives nor birth control are distributed or prescribed on premises as a standard practice. Student Health Services does make limited exceptions for the treatment of medical conditions accompanied by supporting documentation.”  The language here is very clear, which we appreciate.  However, we still want to know what medical conditions are considered, of what severity, and what documentation students need if they have a medical reason to be prescribed oral contraceptives.  Given the requirement of documentation from and outside doctor, we also want to know why the people treating us aren’t allowed to make these diagnoses themselves.  We hope to continue working with Fordham to clarify these policies and educate students about the policies as much as possible.

Our impressions of this process left us in awe of the support that we received from the reproductive justice community.  We got many emails from students, professors, and alumni who were behind us.  We also were happy to see that it was really easy to put together the event with the support of the community.  But best of all, we helped Fordham women receive health care.

Susy Prochazka, Thomas Jefferson School of Law

In our TJSL chapter, each member of the board is passionate about a different facet of the RJ movement.  This brings a great energy to our board and ensures that no one is ever bored (pun intended). To encourage this same vitality amongst our newest members, we decided early in the semester to have a different member of the board present on the topic of his or her particular passion at each monthly meeting in order to show the array of topics that RJ spans. Traditionally, our meetings were more informational and social in nature; through these presentations, we sought to increase the educational aspect of the monthly meetings.

Our secretary Margaret bravely volunteered to be the guinea pig of this experiment. As an intern at our local YWCA’s domestic violence clinic, Margaret wanted to promote October as Domestic Violence Awareness month at our school, which had remained conspicuously silent on the topic of DV in the past. Margaret did not limit herself to making a mere powerpoint citing the statistics and warnings signs of DV.  She completely committed herself to promoting the cause at our meeting by making shirts and ribbons and arranging a team for the “Mile in Her Shoes” charity walk that benefits a downtown safehouse program. Margaret’s dedication and energy was apparent during the meeting, and afterwards, two attendees, both of whom were attending their first ever LSRJ meeting, promptly signed up for the charity walk and inquired about other ways to promote DV awareness!  We considered the meeting a great success.

I went next. My interests lie in the realm of international human rights, so I focused on the theme of cultural restrictions on a woman’s right to choose. I presented on issues affecting women internationally that limit their right to exercise bodily autonomy, discussing some of the practices that impose these restrictions, such as honor killings, female genital cutting, forced marriages, and debt peonage/sex slavery.  I am no public speaker, but I tamped down my anxiety and spoke about what I am passionate about: addressing these international RJ issues. Afterwards I discussed international human rights internships with several members.  While I did not make fabulous shirts, as Margaret had, we are now planning a road trip to L.A. to see the Skirbal Museum Exhibit on the international oppression of women. With my area of focus, I felt that I was able to reach different people in the audience than Margaret had, which seems like a positive goal to have, as we are constantly engaging members in different ways. It was an experience that really let me really expound upon the area of law that I find fascinating while simultaneously snagging the attention of members interested in international law and drawing them into the discussion.

By letting our diverse interests lead the meetings, we are able to present a variety of topics to our members. We are pretty pleased with the level of interest that our presentations have generated, and the practice will continue into next semester.   Fascinated by health law, our co-president Thomas is arranging a panel regarding the legal implications of the different birthing options, whether adoption, traditional midwifery or obstetricians.  We look forward to another semester of harnessing our various passions in the RJ movement and using them to ensure our chapter’s diversity and longevity.

Mallory Carlberg, University of Oklahoma

For the most part, our Law Students for Reproductive Justice (LSRJ) chapter at University of Oklahoma received positive feedback this semester. One person even said they liked being part of a group with “balls.” I, of course, corrected him and said we were a group with balls and ovaries. However, not everyone has enthusiastically supported us. Some groups fear working with us will alienate their pro-life members. A leader of one of these groups recently approached me about co-hosting an abortion debate. From previous experience as a student organizer, I know that debates about abortion are usually not a good idea. The debate tends to focus on religion and when life begins. In the process of debating, I have seen “pro-choice” groups lose sight of their original goal of supporting people with unplanned pregnancies.

Engaging in a pro-life/pro-choice style debate strays too far from the reproductive justice movement’s focus on ending reproductive oppression for my comfort. Instead of agreeing to an abortion debate with this group, I offered to discuss goals we can both work toward, such as comprehensive sex education, improved access to birth control, and improved maternal and infant health outcomes. This person was a proponent of abstinence until marriage and even suggested that some common forms of birth control were abortifactants. It was hard to find common ground, but I know there are other students who can look past LSRJ’s stance on abortion rights.

Since we are a new group, we’ve mostly focused on finding students who we consider our natural allies in the reproductive justice movement: feminists, progressives, people of color and LGBTQ-identified students. Next semester we want to co-sponsor events with groups who we might not initially consider as our natural allies: religious groups and conservative groups. We have to be strategic about what events we bring to campus. Organizing for reproductive justice in a conservative state means we must be careful to stay true to our beliefs, while, at the same time, not reinforcing the beliefs of students who have preconceived ideas of us as man-hating, baby-killing feminists. Sometimes we do the stereotypical thing (we’re excited to be the group handing out condoms on campus!), but sometimes we must decline invitations to cosponsor events because it will hurt our objectives rather than promote them.

Have you successfully organized with conservative groups on your campus? Please send your advice my way!

Mallory Carlberg, University of Oklahoma College of Law

After some trouble getting official recognition and a faculty sponsor, our first event is FINALLY happening next week. In the mean time, my co-chair and I have been assembling the executive board and promoting the event. This gave us many opportunities to have conversations about reproductive justice. The stories students told when we broached the subject impacted us both. Almost every student we spoke to had personally dealt with an RJ issue.

One of our members was overjoyed when she found out she was pregnant last year. Then her baby was diagnosed with anencephaly, the absence of a large part of a brain and skull. This condition is usually not detected until late in the pregnancy. She was devastated and eventually decided to have a D & C. After learning that Oklahoma legislators were considering banning abortions after twenty weeks last session, she wanted to tell her story. A journalist interviewed her, but never published her story, saying that if she came out publicly about her late abortion, she would receive death threats. She wanted people to know how the ban will harm women who are in a similar position as she was. The law is set to go into effect on November first of this year.

Others students shared sex education experiences. Many received abstinence-only education, which often teaches students to be ashamed of their sexuality, and reinforces harmful stereotypes about men as unable to control their passions and women as the gatekeepers of morality. I often shared my sex education story about a goldfish. One day my instructor brought a goldfish in a cup to class, and likened us to the goldfish and god’s protection to the water. She then threw the contents of the cup, goldfish and all, across the room, and explained that, that is what we are like when we are outside god’s protection. She further explained that when we have premarital sex, we are outside god’s protection because we are sinning. This lesson taught us that we could either be clean, healthy virgins or dirty, unhealthy non-virgins – gasping for air on the floor, dying. There was no discussion of how we could place ourselves somewhere in the middle of those two extremes with safer sex practices.

Statistics, theories and hypotheticals are important, but personal stories affect people on a different level. Speaking with fellow students has only reinforced for me the importance of achieving reproductive justice for all. These are not peripheral problems. Reproductive oppression affects everyone at some point in their lives. We hope others come to see this through hearing stories from their fellow students at meetings.

Candace Gibson, University of Utah College of Law

I was very hesitant to start a Law Students for Reproductive Justice chapter at the University of Utah for three reasons:  1) I’m starting my last year-I’m already exhausted and I don’t want to do any more work, 2) it’s Utah, enough said, and 3) the most terrifying reason-how about if no one wants to join the group and it’s just me and my two friends who do claim a feminist identity (I will just be preaching to the choir).  Luckily, my experiences have brought me back to the lessons I learned as a community organizer which have significantly reduced my stress and my hesitancy.

The first couple of weeks of September I was scrambling to get an executive board together (though I am proud to say that the U of U LSRJ has an awesome one that is composed of all three class years!) and at first no one was really chomping at the bit.  Can I blame my 3L friends for saying that they already have too much on their plates? No, I can’t.  Although at desperate moments I thought I was going to be doing all the work and had the recurring thought late at night, “what did I get myself into?” LSRJ made me tap into the lessons that I learned during my community organizing days in college.  These two basic lessons were:  One, there can be no movement without starting a conversation.  Two, people aren’t going to jump on board unless you meet them where they are.  Of course, my peers weren’t going to volunteer for every task and position because all of us were getting barely comfortable with the concept that we were starting an organization at a school that never had an organization like LSRJ, one that was so revolutionary in nature about a subject that is taboo in Utah.  Hell, I was still getting comfortable with the idea.  How can I ask someone to give their precious time when I’m not completely sold on it? As I become more enamored of U of U LSRJ and its potential, I’m not afraid to ask individuals for their time, money, and support.  As these conversations occur, my friends and my peers are willing to volunteer their time or serve on the executive board, and I appreciate every contribution.  Without them, there would be no way that U of U LSRJ can grow.  I also fully know as a community organizer that there may be days where everyone’s personal lives need to be attended to and I will just have to step up to the plate.  As organizers, we often forget that our personal lives will not stop for our professional and public lives.

My experiences have also reminded me of the sheer joy that is part of community organizing.  During the introductory meeting, a future member of the executive board understood the principles of Reproductive Justice so much that she had this enormous smile on her face.  We had made a connection.  These connections and small moments of spontaneity and laughter are going to sustain the group whenever we have our frustrations with each other, with the campus, or with people who just don’t want to understand Reproductive Justice.

Joanne Caceres, Harvard Law School

Amidst the utter chaos that is the first week back at Harvard Law School, I feel a certain calm returning to the classroom where HLSRJ has taken to holding its board meetings. By calm, I partially mean the happiness of seeing familiar faces, but it goes beyond that. It’s the feeling I get being in a room of capable, passionate, and brilliant women and men who are committed to engaging in the same issues as I am. It is moments like these that I reflect on my personal mantra: dripping water carves a stone.

High on our list this year is increasing our visibility on campus in order to create a campus wide conversation on Reproductive Justice. Our first focus is recruiting new 1Ls and building relationships with other progressive campus groups. We are hitting it off next week with the ever-important Reproductive Justice 101 event. I fondly remember the first time I learned about Ms. T, a case study that illustrated the intersectional nature of reproductive justice. It was during that presentation that I knew that RJ would become a major part of my law school career. If we are lucky, we will meet some of our new rising stars at this year’s event!

As we seek to build our core, however, we also are considering opportunities for engaging the entire campus. Through our relationships with other organization leaders, we became aware of a point/counterpoint event that will be looking at the recent anti-abortion bills that have been spreading out throughout many state legislatures, including South Dakota. Many of these bills are slated as being pro-women, because they require providing women with “more information” and more time to make a decision through mandatory wait periods. In reality, these laws are little more than attempts to further limit and prevent abortions, often making what is already a difficult process more difficult. Although we are not officially involved as an organization at this event, our members will be attending and we hope to use this as an opportunity to bring people together to reflect on the conversation. We want to do more this year than talk at people, we want to engage people and allow them to process what is an all too often not openly and intellectually discussed on our law school campus. And hopefully, if we can’t change some minds, at least have our views listened to and understood. It’s shaping up to be quite an active year, drip drip drip.

We are thrilled to introduce our six dynamic and dazzling resident bloggers, coming at you from law schools across the country throughout the 2011-2012 school year!

They come from long-standing chapters, from brand-new chapters, from the South, Midwest, Northeast, DC, and the West, and they will be sharing their chapters successes, discussing challenging conversations they’ve had with colleagues and friends, and inviting us to think critically about a wide range of RJ issues.

Burke Bindbeutel, 2L, University of Missouri

Burke is just beginning an internship at the Missouri Commission for Human Rights. In the summer of 2011, he worked for the Missouri State Public Defender, in the Trial Division. A Missouri native, he has rediscovered his roots through the study of history as a research assistant for the War & Reconciliation project. Burke serves on the screening committee of the True/False Film Festival. In high school, he portrayed Benedick in a stage production of “Much Ado About Nothing.”

Joanne Caceres, 2L, Harvard Law School

Joanne’s interests in reproductive justice include community organizing and progressive advocacy. She is her chapter’s Community Liaison Chair and hopes in this capacity to encourage stronger and broader coalitions on campus. As a a first-generation Hispanic American, Joanne is particularly worried about how lower income and language barriers affect women’s access to adequate healthcare and education.

Mallory Carlberg, 2L, University of Oklahoma

Mallory is currently enjoying the newly regained freedom to choose her own schedule as a 2L at the University of Oklahoma. Despite it being at eight a.m., Health Law is her favorite class. She is interested in issues related to birth justice, comprehensive sex education, and abortion access. She is an editor for the blog at Oklahomans for Reproductive Justice (OK4RJ), a grassroots organization dedicated to caring and advocating for Oklahomans. Additionally she volunteers at a program assisting survivors of domestic violence in obtaining victim protective orders. This year she is co-founding an LSRJ chapter, and is excited to bring a red state perspective to RepoRepro.

Candace Gibson, 3L, University of Utah

Candace is starting an LSRJ chapter as a 3L at the University of Utah. Candace hails from Los Angeles, was raised in Utah, and as a young feminist fled to Smith College.  Before going to law school, she worked with refugee and ethnic communities on a wide range of issues at a small non-profit in Utah.  When her friends and she aren’t talking about politics, they like to analyze pop culture, especially Mad Men.

Shandanette Molnar, 2L, George Washington University Law School

Shandanette is a 2L and Master of Public Health candidate in Maternal & Child Health at George Washington University in Washington, DC. Additionally, she is a birth and postpartum doula and Certificated Lactation Educator & Counselor who volunteers at a local birth center and with a childcare collective. She hopes to blend her legal advocacy skills and public health scholarship with her commitment to reproductive justice, informed choices, and better birth and breastfeeding practices.

Susy Prochazka, 2L, Thomas Jefferson School of Law

Susy is originally from both Prague, Czech Republic and Boulder, Colorado. In her sparse spare time, she enjoys reading sci-fi novels on the beach and surfing.  Before law school, Susy interned at several human rights organizations in D.C. to follow her passion while slinging coffee as a barista to pay the bills. As the co-president of her LSRJ chapter, Susy is working to introduce the concept of reproductive justice and all it entails to the broader community to encourage free expression of body, gender, and sexuality.

When I first heard about Law Students for Reproductive Justice (LSRJ), the strong ties between the national office and its campus chapters struck me. LSRJ is not just resume filler. The Easy-Events-in-an-Envelope and travel stipends for students to attend conferences are just two examples of dedication to cultivating active campus chapters. The annual Leadership Institute (LI) is another. Before the conference, I felt ill equipped to handle the challenges unique to doing reproductive justice work in the South. However, I now feel prepared and excited to help bring an LSRJ chapter to a conservative state.

The conference featured workshops on how to start a new chapter, how to talk to people about reproductive justice, how to diversify membership and how to leave a legacy through cultivating new leadership and institutional memory. With nearly one hundred attendees, the campuses represented were diverse. The schedule accounted for that with events ranging from how to address “social justice burn out” to how to organize on conservative campuses.

Social justice conversations on the coasts are sometimes dismissive of conservative states especially when people refer to residents as backward or beyond hope. But from Sabrina Andrus’ opening speech on moving past an “us versus them” mentality, it was clear that this would not happen at the LI. She asked us to be mindful of ways the word “crazy” can be alienating to both people with mental illnesses and to conference attendees who have family members with so-called “crazy” beliefs. Although it can be difficult to do this work in the South, there are amazing, dedicated law students working here, and I felt the LI took into account the needs of chapters from conservative states beautifully.

Some of the most helpful discussions occurred between the formal workshops as attendees shared experiences over pizza or coffee. Through these conversations, I learned that flexibility is key to effective organizing. Decisions about leadership structure and which issues to discuss need to differ with each law school, depending on the make up of the student body.  The friendships formed at the conference will continue online throughout the year and at regional LSRJ conferences. I am grateful for the opportunity the LI provided to learn, grow, and plan for the academic year with such inspiring attendees and speakers.

Mallory Carlberg

Nearly 100 attendees and 15+ speakers from all walks of life, professions, and law schools around the nation packed Berkeley law school this past weekend for an exciting and inspiring discussion of reproductive justice and campus activism at the fourth annual LSRJ Leadership Institute (LI). Perhaps the most inspiring part of the LI was that it provided a safe environment for like-minded advocates to come together and speak on issues they may not be able to on their own campuses or in their own communities.

This past weekend was about sharing knowledge, building skills, and forming coalitions, but above all I feel it was about learning how to treat each other with the respect we all so deserve. Sabrina Andrus, the mind and soul behind the LI, so lovingly started the weekend with a speech reassuring us that the national office strives to make the LI a safe space for all, and reminded us that as part making the space safe, we needed to refrain from speaking in terms of “us v. them” and needed to focus on not using “we” phrases. It is important that we do not speak on behalf of an entire community, as we all coming from different experiences.  This is an imperative practice to implement into our daily lives. We must begin to replace that “we” with phrases that start with “I.” Such things as “I feel…” are less hurtful and more accurate.

The weekend was full of emotion and kindness, and as a result many friendships were built. “I” am so incredibly grateful for being able to take part in such an amazing and inspiring experience. There are so many thank you’s that are in order – a thank you to all of the knowledgeable and kind individuals who took time out of their schedule to educate and speak at the conference – a thank you to all of the individuals who traveled long distances to take part in this weekend – and a GIANT thank you to LSRJ for organizing and hosting such a successful and important event. I am so thankful I was able to help this weekend as I have a life time of debt I will be repaying to LSRJ for all of the support, guidance, and love they have shown me in such a short time. THANK YOU to you all!!

Nikki Tuttle

This is the third in a series of posts by our resident bloggers as they look back on the past school year and their involvement with LSRJ. Lucy Panza, graduating 3L at Georgetown University Law Center, will not be leaving the LSRJ family, as she was recently named one of our 2011-2012 Reproductive Justice Fellows. Learn more about this program and read bios of all eight Fellows at our RJFP Website.

Next weekend, I’ll be graduating from law school. Even as I write this post, I can hardly believe it!

Ever the LSRJ member, I couldn’t bid adieu to this chapter of my life without reflecting on how this time awakened my passion for reproductive justice. Unlike many LSRJ members, I came to law school with very little experience in the movement – although I had tons of passion to make up for it. I cared about abortion rights and gender equity in the workplace, and what I had read of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work and seen in Hillary Clinton’s appearances touched me deeply. But I had no outlet for it yet, and I did not know whether or where I fit into a broader movement. LSRJ helped me find that fit.

I barely identified as Latina when I entered law school – much less as a Latina advocate for reproductive justice. But LSRJ sent me a persistent message: you have a contribution to make. Your identity is unique, and once you find it, you can use it to affect change. Even if you don’t feel oppressed, look around you – justice is underserved. That’s when I woke up to two major reproductive injustices: the contraception ban in the student insurance at Georgetown, and oppression confronting Latinas in the U.S. These are the two injustices that have defined by RJ legal education, and that I will never stop fighting against.

Through countless LSRJ events, internships, and conversations with enthusiastic advocates, I found my Latina RJ identity and a movement that welcomed me. Our movement is not perfect – it is often plagued by pettiness and even institutionalized sexism – but that is a reason to join it, not to shy away from it, because our generation is its lifeblood.

In August, I will be embarking upon my legal career as a Reproductive Justice Fellow at the Center for American Progress. I can’t wait! I cannot know what the future holds, but with such a great start, it will be hard to go wrong. I thank LSRJ for the guidance it’s provided me in the past, and the support it will provide for years to come. The intersectionality of reproductive freedom and self-determination in a broader sense is clear to me now, thanks to LSRJ.