Reproductive Justice for Whom? : Theory and Tension in Movement Institutionalization

In 1994, late one night in a Chicago hotel room a group of Black women coined the phrase “reproductive justice” (Silliman et al 2004, Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice 2005, Luna 2020) The concept signaled a paradigm shift: a vision to move beyond the abortion debate and “choice” language to address how race, class, citizenship, disability, sexuality, among other identities and structural positions, affected people rights to have children (e.g. as evidenced by histories of forced sterilization) and rights to parent children (e.g. for incarcerated people) (Ross et al 2001, Nelson 2003, Luna 2009, Price 2010 ) RJ is a phrase, movement, theory and praxis (Luna and Luker 2013) Now, various organizations use the phrase, universities in the US have started RJ research centers including Yale, Michigan, UC Berkeley, NYU and UC Irvine, one major health department emphasizes RJ (NYC) and the phrase has appeared in Supreme Court briefs and popular culture. Globally convenings abound and the SRH framework is being supplanted by SRJ framework: This paper explores three primary questions: • How have different ideas of responsibility shaped the integration of reproductive justice into multiple institutions? • What are the implications of theories developed by women of color being integrated in dominant social institutions? • What roles do academics play in shaping activist ideas and practices? The paper draws on observation, archival document analysis , and movement mapping. Thus, it offers a more complex story than a story of co-optation, which activists have long lamented (Luna 2011). It includes consideration of inter-ethnic struggles between communities of color and who gets to claim RJ (Luna 2016, Ross et al. 2017, Luna 2020, Zavella 2020). Further, it considers how as more academics identify their work as RJ scholarship, offer classes under this title, and claim space they (we) also shape the movement in sometimes unintended ways.