I’m Quitting My Job. It’s Reproductive Justice in Action.

Alone I sat at the large, wooden desk. I could never lift this thing, I thought. Since my first law job in California women’s prisons, reproductive justice—the right to have a family or not and the ability to raise the families we do choose in safety and with dignity and respect—framed my legal career. And here I sat at my first executive desk as the director of a center dedicated to reproductive justice. 

I traveled a long, winding road to get to this desk. After law school, I failed the California bar exam three times before passing on my fourth attempt. Between studying, I launched California’s first juvenile record sealing clinic, authored statewide legislation eliminating juvenile record sealing fees, and served hundreds of young people. Despite doing what lawyers do, no one would hire me without a formal license.

Too many smart and talented people of color like me falter as designed in the face of the barriers that keep us out of the legal sector. Legal hopefuls encounter a profession that is 86% white and just 5% Black, 5% Brown, 2% Asian and 0.5% Indigenous; where women of color have made up just 2% of equity partners consistently over decades; and in which, once licensed, women of color experience outsized discrimination. 

There is a solution: Legal apprenticeships provide equitable opportunities for people of color to enter the legal field. I created a nonprofit—Esq. Apprentice—that provides paid apprenticeship training for low-income women of color to become the lawyers our communities need without attending law school or sinking into debt. Over time, the organization grew and led me to this proverbial seat at the table of a leading educational institution training the next generation of bright legal minds and policy advocates. 

As I ran my fingers over the desk’s smooth wood, I distinctly remembered the relief and joy in having made it, knowing the many doors I could open for others. My days were a delicate balance between interacting with the next wave of world-changing advocates in the fight for reproductive justice and balancing the demands of motherhood. Black students sought me out as a mentor. It mattered that I, a Black woman, was sitting behind that cherry-brown desk, especially considering that women of color represent just 7% of legal academia. 

Unfortunately, the institution I served didn’t see it that way. Instead, I was questioned about my abilities to fundraise and lead. I was stripped of administrative support. Over the years, additional experiences—from denied access to budgetary documents to ignored requests for support—pointed to my race and gender and the intersections of both. The lack of dignity and respect afforded me misaligned with the reproductive justice principles the institution espoused. The weight of having to navigate a space that seemed designed to disregard me grew heavier all the time. And I knew that when it came to the inertia of bureaucracy and institutional racism, like my desk, I could not lift it alone. 

So, I’m quitting. Nearly 5 million other parents, people of color, and disregarded hardworking professionals are too in what has been dubbed “the Great Resignation.” 

Discussions about the Great Resignation can overemphasize large, corporate employers’ needs and lose sight of the innovation and imagination we need to reshape the workplace. Applying a reproductive justice lens to the employee exodus shifts the focus from whether people are choosing to work to what makes the choice to work meaningful while centering the experiences of birthing people. With reproductive justice in mind, we can shift the narrative and create workplace environments where employees can thrive. 

Design a human-centered workplace. Birthing people need workplaces that operate as if their lives are of primary concern. For me, that looks like flexible work—in location and time—as a baseline benefit. Remote work options improve employee retention and can benefit employers. Further, UNICEF recommends such family-friendly workplace policies as workplace vaccination sites with reliable, safe, and affordable child care; regular COVID-19 testing; and free, high-filtration masks for everyone until this pandemic is over.

Prioritize people over profits. Nearly 1 million people have died needlessly in two years, and our nation is not OK. Yet there is a push to conduct business as usual under anything but usual circumstances. If, instead, we centered birthing people over profit, we would continue to provide guaranteed basic income like the child tax credit—which reduced childhood hunger for millions—did in the latter half of 2021. We would create workplaces that privilege mental health over corporate productivity because this pandemic is a mass physical and mental health disabling event and our current systems are failing to provide the mental and fiscal support necessary to better ensure worker safety.

Create new pathways into the workplace. I’m quitting my job because I can no longer contribute to business as usual. Instead, I choose to create a workspace rooted in reproductive and economic justice with Esq. Apprentice. By opening pathways for low-income Black, Brown, and Indigenous women to become lawyers without law school via legal apprenticeship, we are creating a world of balanced, sustainable work for marginalized women of color. We are putting employees first by building into the organizational structure a more balanced, four-day workweek; an intentional investment in physical and mental health benefits; and steady stipend support for participants.

Other employers can follow suit. My exit from my job and those of thousands of others are not inevitable. If current institutions will not rise to meet the needs of a workforce that has kept the nation afloat throughout the pandemic, then it is time for that workforce to imagine systems and institutions that will. By placing birthing people at the center of those imaginings, the possibilities for our families and communities are endless. Leaving a job that does not serve my mental, spiritual, physical, or fiscal well-being is not a defeat—it is a victory, because it is reproductive justice in action.