Reproductive Injustice Launched a Civil War Before. It Can Happen Again.

We’ve been here before: American democracy on the brink due to the loss of reproductive rights. 165 years ago, the Supreme Court decided a family reunification case that divided the nation. The Scott family–Dred, Harriet, Eliza, and Lizzie–had their freedom taken from them when their former owner’s widow incarcerated a free Harriet, Eliza, and Lizzie and rented out their labor to maintain her income. Dred Scott organized allies in a free state and fought like hell for eleven years to be reunited with them. I write more about the Scott family and implications for reproductive justice here, but suffice it to say that the case known as an inciting event for the civil war was a case of reproductive justice because it implicated the right to have a family, not have a family and the ability to raise the families we do choose in safety and with dignity and respect.

The Scott Court found that because the Scott family was Black, they were not citizens and therefore had no rights of citizenship including the ability to self-determine their family structure. In declaring thus, the Court invalidated the Missouri Compromise–a devil’s bargain that sought to balance partisan tensions by allowing slavery in some states and freedom in others. Southern states and slavers celebrated the end of the Compromise and called for one nation unified under institutional slavery. Northern states and abolitionists cautioned that, with no guardrails in place, all of our citizenship was threatened and America’s very independence could be invalidated. A civil war ensued. Today, the guardrails are once again falling off and our country risks being torn apart by another reproductive justice case, Dobbs. 

Dobbs does not outright deny citizenship based on race, but considering the disproportionate and race based impact of abortion restrictions and criminalization, Dobbs may just be Dred Scott by another name. In addition to stripping half the nation of inherent human and constitutionally based rights to bodily autonomy, including the right of abortion, no less than a dozen states will make seeking or facilitating abortions a felony which carries with it a ban on voting. Dobbs makes a devil’s compromise by allowing states to decide whether birthing people making reproductive choices can fully enjoy rights of citizenship or whether we will become a second class of non-citizen residents unable to vote or avail ourselves of the basic freedoms outlined in the constitution. 

Black women will be most directly impacted as we are the group obtaining abortions at the highest rates in the nation (perhaps, in part, because Black women are also dying in childbirth at the highest rates in the nation). Add the fact that Black women have been described as the “most loyal democrats” 93% of whom voted to elect Joe Biden, and it becomes clear that the best solution to the democracy crisis before us today must centralize the experiences of Black women. 

Imagine if the Scott Court had engaged a reproductive justice frame and centralized Harriet and Dred Scott’s rights to bodily autonomy. The court would have had no choice but to abolish slavery because a Black birthing persons right to bodily autonomy and to raise their families in safety and with dignity and respect cannot exist alongside a system like slavery that relies on the invasion of those rights to persist. 

To meet this moment, democrats must utilize their majority to do more than compromise and secure some rights to abortion in some places. Instead, the party must engage a reproductive justice frame in all proposed policy measures. The democratic party has a chance to do what the past and current Supreme Courts did not: centralize the safety, dignity and respect of Black birthing people utilizing a reproductive justice frame. If the democratic party can make Black women’s liberation a key function of legislation, the benefits will reverberate throughout this union and reproductive freedom can (finally) be available freely and equitably to all. If the party fails to do so, all of our safety and dignity is at stake.

The leaked Dobbs opinion is just the beginning. Like the slavers after the Dred Scott decision, republicans are celebrating Dobbs as a victory and having discussions on outlawing and criminalizing abortion across the nation. Emboldened by the Dobbs decision, politicians in states like Texas, seek to erode all of our civil liberties with laws that criminalize trans youth and their families and remove immigrant youth rights to education. All of our civil liberties are at stake.    

This anti-democratic end is avoidable. If the democratic party starts at the base, Black women, and uses a reproductive justice frame to incorporate the safety, dignity, and respect of Black birthing people and their families into policy decisions, I guarantee that the benefits will reverberate throughout this union and reproductive freedom can (finally) be available freely and equitably to all. 

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.