This article was published by The Center for American Progress.  

Elizabeth Chen is a Policy Analyst for the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress and a Law Students for Reproductive Justice law fellow.

The Family and Medical Leave Act was signed into law 20 years ago today and was a great first step toward supporting workers and workplace fairness. The law ensures that employees can receive 12 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave to recover from a serious medical condition, provide care for a seriously ill family member, or care for a new child. Workplace leave, however, is not just an employment issue—it is also a matter of reproductive justice.

Reproductive justice stands at the intersection of traditional reproductive rights concerns, such as the decision whether to become a parent, and social justice issues. In addition, it centers on the reproductive health needs of the most marginalized populations, including women of color, low-income individuals, and individuals with disabilities, among others. In our 2006 report,“More than a Choice: A Progressive Vision for Reproductive Health and Rights,” we set forth four cornerstones essential to a progressive reproductive health, rights, and justice agenda, including policies that support the ability to become a parent and to parent with dignity—meaning being able to financially, emotionally, and physically support a child’s basic needs—and the ability to have healthy and safe families and relationships.

Workplace leave is crucial for all people, but especially for low-income individuals seeking to become parents and have healthy families—a right to which we are all entitled. Historically, though, some parenting has been privileged at the expense of others, and not everyone has been able to exercise this right.

Laws and social movements, for example, encouraged white women to stay out of the workforce in order to provide full-time care for their children, while driving women of color—especially black women—into paid work, thus preventing them from being full-time stay-at-home caregivers to their children. Harvard Law Dean Martha Minow has documented how welfare policy for mothers in the late 19th century provided income support for them to stay at home. When access to such income support became increasingly available to black women during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, however, the rhetoric surrounding welfare became more negative. University of Pennsylvania Law Professor Dorothy Roberts explainsthat, “The central message of welfare reform is that recipient mothers are deviant for staying home and would better serve their children by finding jobs.”

To this day, programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which provides income support for families living in poverty, require work in the formal economy—or training for it—driving low-income parents into the workforce. Unpaid work within the home, including caring for families, does not satisfy the program’s requirements. This is not merely a historical remnant of former cultural biases—as recently as the 2012 presidential election, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) claimed that he would require mothers receiving income support to either work outside the home or lose the support.

Furthermore, parenting itself is highly gendered in law and society, making it difficult for men to assume caregiving roles. Sex-role stereotypes, often historically codified in law, cast white women as caregivers and white men as breadwinners. Masculinity throughout the 20th century was defined by this stereotypical family wage system, even though working-class men and men of color were largely excluded from that system.

The gendered breadwinner-caregiver model has become increasingly destabilized over time. In fact, as we noted in our issue brief, “The New Breadwinners: 2010 Update,” in 2010 women were either primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families with children. Yet gendered caregiver bias persists and can result in employment discriminationagainst men when they request leave to care for their children.

Given the devaluation of caregiving, while also recognizing that most parents—especially low-income ones—must work, how can we support working parents as both workers and caregivers? The Family and Medical Leave Act was a step in the right direction: By protecting the jobs of workers caring for a new child, the law reflects policymakers’ recognition that caretaking after birth or adoption of a child is essential, and that workers should have the flexibility to take time off to do so.

The law also furthers equality and disrupts sex-role stereotypes by applying equally to both men and women. Under the law, men and women alike have the opportunity to take time off to care for family members—and the percentage of men taking leave for caregiving purposes hasincreased steadily over time. Even former Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, initially anopponent of women’s equality under the law, acknowledged the crucial work that the law does to “attack the formerly state-sanctioned stereotype that only women are responsible for family caregiving.”

Workplace policies such as the Family and Medical Leave Act give workers the opportunity to care for their families with dignity by permitting them to continue to work and also to spend crucial time bonding with their new children. Under the law, workers can also take time off to care for a seriously ill family member, including a child, expanding the ability for parents to meet the needs of their children.

Unfortunately, the Family and Medical Leave Act doesn’t go far enough. As we noted in our 2009 issue brief, “Labor Pains: Improving Employment and Income Security for Pregnant Women and New Mothers,” the law only covers a subset of workers.  According to new statistics released by the Department of Labor, more than 60 percent of workers do not qualify for the protections of the law because they or their employers do not meet one or more requirements for leave. Moreover, because the leave is unpaid, almost 50 percent of workers report not being financially able to take the leave. Guaranteed leave does not enhance the ability for individuals to parent with dignity if they do not qualify for it or cannot afford to take it.

Workplace leave is crucial for people with children to be able to parent with dignity and have healthy families. The ability to care for children when they are born or adopted, or when they fall ill is essential to a holistic and comprehensive vision of reproductive health, rights, and justice. The Family and Medical Leave Act was a good beginning, but we must continue to fight until all Americans have the ability to care for their children without jeopardizing their job or their income.

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

Ladies and Gentlemen, we did it.  We spoke up and spoke out.  We debated, made phone calls, sent emails, posted endlessly on Facebook, tweeted, laughed and cried, then laughed again.  We followed our hearts and we stood up for the rights of others.  We voted.  On behalf of my vagina and the millions of vaginas across these United States, I say thank you.

As I watched the news over the past week, I was overwhelmed with a sense of relief and accomplishment.  This is what I saw (thanks to Planned Parenthood for the headlines):

Oregon congressional candidate Art Robinson said the government should force a rape survivor to continue an unwanted pregnancy, by compensating her “very generously…for this burden.”  He LOST to women’s health champion Peter DeFazio!

Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh said there should be no abortion exception for the life of the mother, because “with modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” in which a woman would actually die.  He was FIRED!

Florida Congressman Allen West said, “Planned Parenthood women…have been neutering American men.”  He just got FIRED in his bid for re-election!

Washington congressional candidate John Koster said “the rape thing” does not excuse abortions, because “crime has consequences.”  He just LOST.

Richard Mourdock said pregnancy from rape is “something God intended.”  He just LOST his bid for an Indiana Senate seat.

Missouri Congressman Todd Akin said women can’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape.” He just got FIRED in his bid for a Senate seat!

This election became something this year that past elections have never been for me:  personal.  I cannot recall an election year that meant more to me.  Perhaps it was the fact that I am in my second year of law school in an environment conducive towards political awareness and, at least in Oregon, progressive legislation and politicians.

Or perhaps it was the fact that I am now the Co-Director of the University of Oregon’s LSRJ chapter, a title that I feel is a testament to my unwavering support of the pursuit of reproductive justice.  It was these reasons that motivated me to share my views with my family, friends, classmates, and even strangers at an airport (true story).  But one reason above all these inspired me the most.  This year my kids asked me, “Who are you voting for?”  I don’t recall ever asking my parents whom they voted for (it usually wasn’t a mystery) and so I was a bit shocked to hear it from my kids’ mouths.  I wasn’t sure whether they would understand and I considered changing the subject…and then thought better.  “I’m voting for President Obama,” I said assuredly, “and this is why…”  I proceeded to tell my ten-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son exactly why I was voting for President Obama.  It was an engaging discussion, full of questions and comments.  It made me hopeful for the future and to many more meaningful discussions to come.

So, here’s to the voters, to the ladies and gents, and kids too!  We can rest easy tonight knowing that our lady parts or the lady parts of ladies we love are much safer.

Elisabeth Smith, Resident Blogger (’14, University of Washington School of Law)

On Saturday night, Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart debated each other in “The Rumble 2012.”  Bill’s opening statement concluded as follows: “The poster person for the entitlement society is Sandra Fluke.  Do you know Sandra? I left two tickets for Sandra plus a month’s supply of birth control pills at will call. Is she here tonight? Sandra, buy your own. Coupon. We shouldn’t be paying for this or a lot of other stuff.”  He also held up a sign reading “Buy.  Your.  Own.”

This talking point is old. Rush Limbaugh first called Ms. Fluke a slut on February 29, 2012. Since then, she’s graduated from Georgetown Law (where she was the GULC LSRJ President), spoken at the DNC, and campaigned for President Obama.

Let’s remember what she said to Congress though.  Sandra Fluke testified about the need for her insurance plan to cover contraceptives. Not once did she ask for you, or me, or anyone else to pay for birth control.  In fact, she didn’t even talk about her own need for contraceptives, but rather her friends who couldn’t afford it, including one with polycystic ovarian syndrome who needs to take birth control to stops cysts from growing on her ovaries.

How did these women’s medical decisions morph into a stubborn story of insatiable sexual appetite and demands for free birth control? AND, p.s., who cares if someone has an insatiable sexual appetite?! Frankly, sex-shaming is obvious and tired. Why won’t this story die? Why can’t Bill O’Reilly get his facts right? Why does he keep retelling his version of Ms. Fluke’s testimony?

I don’t know. I really don’t. But the image of Bill O’Reilly, deliberately, patronizingly, slowly scolding Ms. Fluke from afar “Buy. Your. Own” while holding a three word sign makes me apoplectic. She spoke honestly and compassionately about the religiously-imposed limitations of her health insurance plan and the resulting effects on specific individuals.

So, Bill, stop talking about Ms. Fluke. Stop using her name as an applause line. Stop with the authoritative, demeaning tone. And, while you’re at it, check out this study.  It turns out free birth control is actually a pretty great thing.

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!

Elisabeth Smith (’14, University of Washington School of Law)

My passport expired on June 12, 2012.  In the 10 years I carried that passport, I lived in Japan and traveled across Asia, Europe, South America, and Africa. Leafing through the pages reminds me of amazing full-color adventures: interesting people, delicious food, different languages, widely varying experiences and opinions.

When I flipped through the pages of my new hyper-American passport, I saw something radically different. No diversity, no nod to different experiences or differing perspectives. The United States as depicted in our current passport (established in 2007) has no cities, no minorities, and no women. True, there are quotations at the top of each spread and exactly one comes from a woman, one from an African-American man, one from a Japanese American, and one from an unattributed Mohawk Thanksgiving address. All the others are from white men or from documents written by the Founding Fathers. The U.S. as seen in the illustrations includes white men, both as figures and as faces carved into Mt. Rushmore, mountains, cactus, buffalo, eagles, oxen, longhorns, salmon, unidentified birds, the Atlantic, the Mississippi, a lake, and the moon. The white men fight the British, till a field, and herd the longhorns. The only industrial depictions are a steamboat, a plow, the railroad, and, on the back inside cover, a space satellite.

Where am I in that depiction of the U.S.? Where are women of color? Where are Asian-Americans? Where are Latinos? Where are African-Americans? Each of the illustrations obliquely reference a more complicated history, but never depict that history. Who built the railroad? Chinese immigrants. Whose ancestors were forced to come to this country in ships? Who lived in concert with the bison and who shot hundreds of thousands of them and left them to rot on the plains? Who considered the mountain that became Mt. Rushmore a holy site before the rock face was cut away to reveal presidential power?

In short, this passport creates a stylized version of Sarah Palin’s “real America,” a country that never existed. Yet, this white-washed, masculine, rural country clearly appealed to the lawmakers who approved it and to the State Department that created it. In fact, when the passport was released in 2007, the deputy assistant secretary of state for passport services stated, “We thought it really, truly reflects the breadth of America as well as the history. We tried to be inclusive of all Americans.”

What’s the link to reproductive justice? Well, if our lawmakers think the country they’re governing is the one in this passport, then they haven’t considered whether a woman of color has the support to parent her children with dignity, or whether a Native American woman can access emergency contraception through Indian Health Services, or whether an Asian woman working at a nail salon is adequately protected from the toxins in nail polish. Until we understand that an illustration of bison feeding in front of a mountain does not mean the same thing to every American, until we recognize that depicting Americans as only white men ignores vast and valuable American experiences, reproductive justice will remain just out of reach. Until our government and our fellow citizens recognize that we’re a nation of interesting people, delicious food, different languages, widely varying experiences and opinions, reproductive justice will remain an ideal, not a reality.

I have no choice but to carry this passport. When I do, though, I will do my best to honor the people it doesn’t.

Elisabeth Smith, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

Everywhere you look someone is pontificating about the war on women. We must defend ourselves! No, there isn’t a war! Wait, actually the President is the one waging it.

Lately those of us who support the right to safe and legal abortions and the ability to access them regardless of race, economics, legal status, or geography, have been reacting. We’ve been told to be fearful because fear can be a powerful, yet short-term motivator.  March, yell, scream, protest, call your Senator, your Governor, your Representative!  Where does such fear take us though? Does it marginalize our beliefs far better than a zealot on the other side ever could?

Fear precludes discussions of why contraception and abortion and the ability to plan our families are crucial. Reacting fearfully does not allow for conversations about gender, race, and class. If we’re only focused on today’s crisis how can we explain that if rights don’t include access then for many people they are meaningless?

Reproductive justice (RJ) recognizes the effects of compound identities (race, ethnicity, gender, age, class, legal status, etc.) on reproductive autonomy and the interactions of those identities with healthcare, education, access to information, and social support. RJ advocates envision a world in which people with the necessary rights, information, and resources could make reproductive choices with dignity and free from violence or oppression.

In order to achieve the goals of our movement, we need to stop reacting and start talking, start imagining what an RJ world would look like. Sure, it wouldn’t include the District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act or similar state laws, but why wouldn’t it? If I just scream and say no and thrash about, I’m not giving anyone reason to listen to me or be persuaded.

I’d like to propose something radical. Let’s stop being angry and quash the fear that manufactures short-term effects. Let’s talk, let’s brainstorm, let’s help people understand why realizing reproductive justice is crucial for the betterment of our communities, our country, and the world. Let’s stop using the language of fear and oppression: war, battle, struggle, fight, strike, blow, assault.

Now, please understand that I’m not suggesting that we naively sing kumbaya while the states and the federal government limit our rights and inhibit access. We need allies who work to counter those measures, but we also need allies who explain why RJ is necessary on our terms, using our language.

Reframing conversations about contraception and abortion, one piece of the RJ framework, requires recognizing basic truths: people will always have sex, sometimes without wanting that sex to lead to pregnancy and sometimes with the hope of having a child.   Let’s start there.

In terms of contraception and abortion, what would an RJ world look like to you?

Rosie Wang, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

In many ways Bei Bei Shuai’s story sounds like my mom’s. Both women were raised in large Chinese cities, in households where both parents worked. Both came to the United States, following partners with promising job prospects. Both worked in Chinese restaurants while harboring plans to improve their English and get graduate degrees. It’s the story of many Chinese immigrant women, but Ms. Shuai’s narrative diverged when, at eight months pregnant, she was abandoned by her boyfriend who, it turns out, had another family.

Suffering from major depression, Ms. Shuai ingested rat poison as a suicide attempt and was rushed to the hospital by friends. She consented to all treatment to save her life and her pregnancy, but while she survived, but the baby she gave birth to died after a few days. She was charged with murder and attempted feticide while still hospitalized for an emotional breakdown and then spent 435 days in prison. She is now out on bail, but paying for a GPS-enabled ankle bracelet that will cost her $2500 until her trial.

What is wrong with this picture?

Well, what part of what Bei Bei Shuai did was criminal? Suicide is not a crime in Indiana and the law used to charge Ms. Shuai with feticide was targeted at third party attacks on pregnant women, not abortion. This particular interpretation of the law is the result of a swelling segment of anti-choice advocates who want to give fetuses separate legal personhood. This in turn criminalizes the behavior of pregnant women and subjects them to investigation for miscarriages or poor birth outcomes. Pregnant women would become a separate class with fewer rights.
Second, criminal penalties hardly seem like an effective deterrent to actions made under extreme emotional disturbance. That just isn’t how mental health works! Instead there needs to be careful screening and medical treatment for the 13-20% of women who experience depression while pregnant, and the 30% of depressed pregnant women have suicidal ideation.
Finally, let’s go back to the familiar story of Ms. Shuai’s immigrant experience. Many media outlets have portrayed Ms. Shuai sympathetically, but this sympathy can misguidedly stem from referencing the model minority myth rather what is owed to all women. The one interview with Bei Bei Shuai currently online shows her answering the questions about her family, her hopes upon arriving in America, and how she spent her time in prison. She answers that she came to the US wanting independence and an MBA, has been taking classes in prison, and is still strongly determined to live in America.

Together, Ms. Shuai’s optimistic answers and lack of hard feeling toward the American justice system form a perfect narrative of the grateful, educated, and ambitious immigrant. It seems to announce to white viewers, “Hey! She might be a foreigner and a woman of color, but she’s middle class, loves this country, and believes in its bootstrapping principles! We can sympathize with her and thus she deserves better!” But the insidious implication in the media constructing this type of narrative is that only people who have lived “perfect” lives up until that point — those who can answer those questions as Ms. Shuai or my mother would — are entitled to bodily autonomy and freedom from state intrusion into their private grief. And even if Bei Bei Shuai’s Chinese upbringing might look like a non-threatening analogue of the stereotypical American family, 34% of American children actually do not live in a home with two married parents. Many women from these families are especially vulnerable in terms of the ability to access health services and will see their rights stripped away by fetal personhood statutes. Bei Bei Shuai is admirably resilient and positive and her story demonstrates how even women who have conformed to the mainstream can become victimized. But women who do not fit that profile, who might be undocumented immigrants, on public assistance, raised in nontraditional families, angry about the way American society has written them off, all deserve justice and dignity just as much. It’s a basic human right.

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.

RH Reality Check produces a new short of women sharing their stories entitled, “Our Reality: Women and HIV.”

On April 2, 2012 Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) performed the largest immigration sweep to date arresting three thousand people in six days. What does this mean for families?

Sady Doyle highlights the intersection between Feminism and Immigration and the ways some women are left out.

Round of virtual applause to the UVA LSRJ chapter for hosting a session called Challenges to Choice in Virginia.

Check out this real world example of how the 20 week abortion ban hurts families. Although this instance is one of the “perfect victim”—heterosexual married couple that wanted a pregnancy—it does serve to illustrate how this law impacts real lives and how more people should share their stories.

Esmé Deprez shows us how Curbing Female Reproductive Rights Raises Taxpayers Costs.

Burke Bindbeutel, University of Missouri School of Law

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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