The San José State Gender Equity Center hosted a Lunch and Learn session that discussed how reproductive justice is racial justice on Tuesday afternoon.
Students ate free pizza and salad while a group of panelists discussed the intersections of reproductive justice and racial justice.
Gender Equity Center event coordinator intern Kayla Le led the session and asked questions to the panelists.
“(The Gender Equity Center focuses) on education, outreach and programming on gender equity issues,” Le said. “Specifically empowering the voices and experiences of historically marginalized genders and gender identities.”
Le said reproductive rights are a more individualist approach to reproductive rights and systems, whereas reproductive justice is a broader analysis of racial, economic, cultural and structural constraints on individuals and communities.
SJSU women, gender, and sexuality professor Tanya Bakhru opened the discussion by talking about the origins of reproductive justice.
“Reproductive justice is a term that was coined in the late ‘90s by black feminists who were looking at issues around reproductive autonomy and bodily integrity in an intersectional way,” Bakhru said.
The term reproductive rights initially started considering the issues of bodily autonomy intersectionality but was co-opted by the mainstream to mean abortion rights, she said.
Panelist and associate professor for the Department of Justice studies Grace Howard said that the reproductive justice approach brings in a holistic view.
“Some people find themselves at the intersections of multiple kinds of oppression at the same time,” Howard said. “Instead of looking at oppression as racial oppression which is separate from sex and gender oppression, we can instead bring those two together.”
The contemporary framework for reproductive justice lies on three tenets; the right not to have a child, the right to have a child and the right to parent children in safe and healthy environments according to the library guide from the Fordham University Libraries.
“Some folks add a fourth tenant to the typical three,” Howard said. “It’s sort of implied in the three, but I like to say it out loud – and that is the right to separate sex from reproduction.”
During the women's suffrage movement, people with marginalized identities were often excluded from the movement according to a National Park Service webpage.
Women, gender and sexuality studies assistant professor Susana Gallardo said that reproductive justice speaks to the concerns of mostly women of color.
“(Reproductive justice) takes and listens to those concerns that women-of-color activists and sexuality activists and so many others who said ‘hey what about all this other stuff,’ ” Gallardo said.
She said reproductive rights is not just about abortions, but also the right to not have one and be able to afford to raise a child.
Challenges faced by women of color both historically and currently were discussed by panelists.
“(There) is this tug of war over who our society feels is legitimate to have children, and who isn’t legitimate to childbear,” Bhakur said.
Forced sterilization was discussed, this is when a person is involuntarily or coerced to remove their ability to reproduce according to a webpage on the International Justice Resource Center.
Gallardo said the film “No Más Bebés” covers the case of Mexican American women who were forcibly sterilized at the USC County Medical Center in the 1960s and 1970s.
“All these women had gone into a C-section and been sterilized without their knowledge,” Gallardo said. “In many cases they actually signed but they were talked to when they were in labor.”
Bhakur said that there is a deeply racist white supremacist history in America around reproductive autonomy.
Just some examples of such were Africans being forced breeders, sterilization of women of color, and child removal from Indigenous and Native communities, Bhkaur said.
“The founding of modern-day gynecology is basically this guy who had black slaves and did experiments on them,” Bhakur said.
Gallard said there's this sense that there are certain types of people that should have the right to have children and others the sense they should be controlling it.
“Very deeply entrenched legacies of forced family separation among enslaved Africans, Native Indigenous communities mourning the Indian boarding school system,” Bhakur said. “In contemporary society the foster care system, which is a result largely of poverty and surveillance.”
Howard said that the maternal mortality rate is a massive issue in the United States and has only risen.
Maternal mortality refers to death occurring from the complications of pregnancy according to data by UNICEF.
Black women in America have the highest maternal mortality rate, which is three times higher than the rates of maternal mortality of white women according to a 2023 article by the Associated Press.
“This is not physiological,” Howard said “This is what happens when the healthcare system is racist.”
Bhakur said something that illustrates how society places different values on different bodies, which can be seen in the amount of money someone is offered for egg donation.
“(Egg donation is) incredibly medically risky to do this, we don't even really fully understand the medical impact of doing this on our bodies,” Howard said
To wrap up the panel, Kayla Le asked panelists about how we as a society can address inequalities within race and reproductive justice.
“Reproductive justice is about reclaiming our lives, reclaiming sexuality (and) reclaiming our gender identity,” Gallardo said.
