The SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, also known as SisterSong, is a national activist organization dedicated to reproductive justice for women of color.
Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, SisterSong is a national membership organization with a focus on the Southern United States. They include and represent Indigenous, Black, Asian and Pacific Islander, Arab and Middle Eastern, Latinx, and queer women and trans people. SisterSong says that they strive to center the needs of the most marginalized people of color, such as people with low incomes, young mothers, people with criminalization experience, people with HIV/AIDS, sex workers, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ people. Membership also includes white and male allies.
SisterSong has built a movement that now includes many independent organizations across the country, and they remain a movement thought leader, trainer, convener, organizer, and collaboration facilitator. Monica Simpson has served as executive director since 2012.
History
Origins of reproductive justice
In 1994, just before attending the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo (at which international leaders would agree that the individual right to plan one's own family must be central to global development, rather than population control efforts), a group of black women gathered for a conference sponsored by the Illinois Pro-Choice Alliance and the Ms. Foundation for Women. Their goal was to create a statement about the Clinton administration's proposed Universal Health Care plan. In the process, they coined "reproductive justice" as a combination of "reproductive rights" and "social justice." The women who created the reproductive justice framework were: Toni M. Bond Leonard, Reverend Alma Crawford, Evelyn S. Field, Terri James, Bisola Marignay, Cassandra McConnell, Cynthia Newbille, Loretta Ross, Elizabeth Terry, Mable Thomas, Winnette P. Willis, and Kim Youngblood. They launched the reproductive justice framework by publishing a full-page statement titled "Black Women on Universal Health Care Reform" with over 800 signatures in The Washington Post and Roll Call using the concept of reproductive justice in a criticism of the Clinton health care plan.
These women believed that the creation of reproductive justice was necessary because they felt that the mainstream women's rights movement was led by and focused on the needs of middle class white women and did not meet the needs of women of color. In their view, the pro-choice framework focused on maintaining abortion rights and did not take into account the many ways that women of color and other marginalized women and trans people have difficulty accessing abortion even in places where it is legally allowed. The creators of reproductive justice also felt that the pro-choice framework did not align with the experiences of women of color, who often feel that the impact of systemic oppression limits their possibilities, so their reproductive lives are not guided by the self-determination that is taken for granted in the word "choice". In addition, they asserted that the mainstream women's rights movement did not center other pressing issues in the reproductive lives of women of color. These issues included sterilization abuse, forced and coerced promotion of LARCs (long-acting reversible contraceptives), high maternal mortality, difficulty accessing birth support choices, unsafe drinking water in family homes, police brutality, and parents being separated from children through racially biased immigration and incarceration practices.
Reproductive justice advocates say that the framework strives to center the needs and leadership of the most marginalized people, rather than the majority, and to focus on how multiple oppressions intersect in the lived experience of marginalized people. The creators of the reproductive justice framework rooted it in the international human rights framework, asserting that reproductive justice is an inalienable human right.
SisterSong’s forerunner
In 1992, six national women of color organizations came together seeking to increase their impact on the mainstream women's rights/pro-choice movement and on US policy: Asians and Pacific Islanders for Choice, National Black Women's Health Project, National Latina Health Organization, Latina Roundtable on Health and Reproductive Rights, National Coalition of 100 Black Women, and Native American Women's Health and Education Resource Center. Together, they formed Women of Color Coalition for Reproductive Health Rights (WOCCRHR).