My Feet Only Walk Forward: Reproductive Justice and HIV

Guest post: Brandon Lacy Campos, Co-Executive Director of Queers for Economic Justice, gave the following remarks at the opening plenary of the From Abortion Rights to Social Justice: Building the Movement for Reproductive Freedomconference PopDev co-hosts with our partner program CLPP every April.

 

Let me begin by saying that being a bio boy that grew up with a penis and male privilege, that I have one and only comment to make about abortion: as a man, I fully respect the autonomy and sovereignty of women over their own bodies and my only legitimate opinion on abortion is that I am required, by the privilege of being male, to use that privilege to protect in anyway and every way possible the right of a woman to choose.

Any bio male that says otherwise is entitled to have his opinion validated just as soon as he figures out how to give birth through his penis.

But this amazing and brilliant conference, From Abortion Rights to Social Justice is centered in a reproductive justice framework, and you can’t talk about reproductive justice without talking about sex, and you sure as hell can’t talk about sex without talking about HIV, prevention justice, and justice for people living and thriving with HIV and AIDS.

And I am hella qualified to talk about HIV….and sex. Considering I have both.

The “Seven Billion” Strategy, and Why We Need a New One

Katie McKay Bryson, PopDev Acting Director from January to June of 2012, gave the following remarks at the opening plenary of the From Abortion Rights to Social Justice: Building the Movement for Reproductive Freedom conference on April 13th-15th.

I have the honor and pleasure of working with Betsy Hartmann and Courtney Hooks at the Population and Development program here at Hampshire, and of walking in the footsteps of former PopDev staff — several of whom are here this morning, all of whom I look up to.

For 26 years, PopDev has worked at an intersection of environment, development, anti-militarism, and reproductive freedom. (It’s a busy intersection.) But at the center of our work is the commitment to challenge the conventional belief that population growth is a main force behind social problems, from famine and violent conflict, to ecosystem degradation and even climate change. We strive to bring those conversations back to the structures of global inequality, colonization, and over-consumption that actually drive them.

These are very hard conversations to have. For many folks, this is about our bodies, or the bodies of people we love. For others, it challenges a fundamental understanding of the world to suggest that there are not actually too many people on the planet — but instead an unsustainable, industrially demanding level of consumption by a minority of those people.

A student asked me recently what the number seven billion means — that is, what the global population reaching seven billion means.

Missing the Target: Stigma, Criminalization, and Sex Selection Abortion Bans

New issue of DifferenTakes! (Download for free & visit the archive.)

Only a few months into 2012, we’re riding an aggressive wave of anti-abortion, anti-contraception legislative attempts and public commentary. The disturbingly titled Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, which passed through the House Judiciary Committee with unanimous Republican support in late February, distills these recent efforts to further stigmatize and criminalize reproductive health care.

The idea that we can determine a single reason why people seek abortions, and use that to legislate on their bodies, medical providers, and families is divisive, misleading, and dangerous. In this issue of DifferenTakes, health care advocate Jaspreet Chowdhary examines the push for racial profiling in prenatal care from her perspective as an Asian and Pacific Islander (API) cultural defender, gender equality warrior, and new mama.

View this document on Scribd

Against Her Will: Forced and Coerced Sterilization of Women World Wide

The Open Society Foundation’s Stop Torture in Health Care campaign recently released a report titled Against Her Will: Forced and Coerced Sterilization of Women World Wide, revealing that even though sterilizing women without consent is a violation of international human rights law many governments are still overlooking, or even promoting, forced and coerced sterilization.

Coerced and forced sterilization have different definitions but in practice have the same results: an irreversible inability to reproduce. Coerced sterilization is the name given when people are pressured through financial incentives, false information, or intimidation—for example, when employers require women to have “sterilization certificates” as a condition for employment, or when clinicians refuse medical treatment until HIV-positive women consent to sterilization. Both of these examples, documented in the new report, violate the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics ethical guidelines.

When a person is sterilized without their knowledge or consent prior to the procedure, such as woman being sterilized immediately after cesarean sections without doctors informing or consulting before the procedure, it’s called forced sterilization. In many ways, coerced and forced sterilization are essentially the same: people are forced or manipulated into losing their ability to reproduce.

Reproductive Justice Conference 2011!

Tomorrow kicks off the 30th Anniversary Reproductive Justice Conference, From Abortion Rights to Social Justice: Building the Movement for Reproductive Freedom!

PopDev workshops include Progressive Visions for Immigrant Rights, Environmental Justice: Toxic Legacies & Transformative Change, Reproductive Technology & the New Eugenics, The Center of Somewhere: Marginalized Issues in Global Reproductive Health, Indigenous People Organize, Politics of Population Control, and many more.

Want to meet a few of the awesome people presenting?