Teaching Reproductive Justice

WADRJ insisted on a fully funded suite of reproductive health care for all women, from pap smears to mammograms to prenatal care, regardless of race, class, age, (dis)ability, or sexual orientation. To acknowledge women's bodily autonomy as a human right transposes conditions usually seen as "women's issues" (sexual assault, intimate partner violence, child marriage, and the like) into paramount concerns. The claim to bodily autonomy offers a different model from the traditional formulations of human rights, one based on both lived experience and political analysis rather than the disembodied and abstracted "individual" that is the supposed subject of human rights. [...]we can't discuss the complexity of RJ without mentioning the most recent dismantling of the already greatly limited right of Americans to abortion: the Supreme Court's decision in the 2022 case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade and any federal constitutional right to abortion.5 There is little for us to say here that hasn't already been said over the past two years, except that this iteration of the Supreme Court is determined to claw back any and all access Americans, especially Black people and other people of color, have to the vote; to clean water, air, and soil; to abortion; to shelter; and to protection from gun violence.