Reproductive Justice and Black Women: Real Issues

Reproductive Justice is more than having an abortion or not. It’s about a woman’s holistic well-being and her ability to make choices for her health and her life overall. For Black women, the fight for access to healthcare and birth control continues. Prenatal and perinatal care are also issues that are paramount to full reproductive justice because it deals with what happens after a woman decides to have a child and gives her the opportunity to do what’s best for her health and the health of her baby. In addition, Black women should have access to midwives if they do not want to have a child in a hospital—or who don’t have access to health insurance that will pay for a hospital stay.

There are also reproductive health issues that affect Black women more than any other group, such as fibroids and HIV/AIDS. Up to 80% of Black women have fibroids, many of whom go through hysterectomies to remove the fibroids, a procedure that severely limits a woman’s reproductive choices. STI’s such as HIV/AIDS also limits reproductive choices, but are preventable through access to condoms and education. In reproductive justice, sex education is key to protecting ourselves from HIV and other STI’s.

In a world where Black women are still dehumanized and black women’s bodies have been used to perfect contraceptives, reproductive justice becomes an issue of fighting for humanity and protecting our wombs. Reproductive justice is about challenging images and ideas that portray black women as unfit mothers. Who can forget the billboards proclaiming that the most dangerous place for a Black child is in the womb? As a whole reproductive justice isn’t about giving women the choice to become mothers, it is also about giving mothers the tools they need to care for their children.

What are some of the things that come to mind when you think about Black women and reproductive justice? What does reproductive justice mean to you?