Domesticating Human Rights: Possibilities and Ambiguities in the Emerging Reproductive Justice Movement.

Reproductive rights have been a controversial issue for decades due to the legal battles surrounding abortion. Yet, activists in the emerging reproductive justice movement often use a human rights analysis to challenge the women’s movement’s emphasis on “law on the books.” As such, reproductive justice activists consider how lack of economic and social human rights limit people’s rights to have a child (e.g., for low-income women) and the right to parent (e.g., for incarcerated parents). A human rights frame is an unusual choice given its history in the US. In the 1940s, African American leaders unsuccessfully attempted to challenge racism through engaging human rights. However, their successful movement for limited civil rights became the model for successive US movements. Why, despite the dominance and success of a civil rights frame, did the later reproductive justice movement choose the human rights frame? In addition, what have been the consequences of this adoption on the wider women’s movement? To answer these questions, I analyze SisterSong, a national reproductive justice coalition, and its engagement with human rights. This dissertation draws on interviews, archival documents, and participant observation. I explore the confluence of domestic and international events that led to this choice of mobilizing around human rights. Then, I examine specific ways activists leverage human rights through the concept of reproductive justice. I further demonstrate how women of color and their allies work to move narrow definitions of reproductive rights from a limited concept of “choice” toward a more inclusive reproductive justice. Finally, I examine the contradictory articulations of human rights consciousness exhibited by activists, and what their varying consciousness suggests for a possible domestic human rights movement. Many reproductive justice activists perceive that engaging with the human rights-based reproductive justice frame allows them to bring their “whole selves” into a movement, rather than requiring alignment with competing movements that fail to address their complex (reproductive) realities. Even if human rights do not become institutionalized in the US legal system, we can expect increased deployment of human rights by marginalized communities that are increasingly demanding systemic justice not only limited legal reform.Ph.D.Women's Studies & SociologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/89839/1/zakiyal_1.pd

Bridging the Expertise of Advocates and Academics to Identify Reproductive Justice Learning Outcomes

Phenomenon: Reproductive justice (RJ) is defined by women of color advocates as the right to have children, not have children and parent children while maintaining reproductive autonomy. In the United States, physicians have been complicit in multiple historical reproductive injustices, involving coercive sterilization of thousands of people of color, low income, and disabilities. Currently, reproductive injustices continue to occur; however, physicians have no formal RJ medical education to address injustices. The objective of this study was to engage leading advocates within the movement using a Delphi method to identify critical components for such a curriculum. Approach: In 2016, we invited 65 RJ advocates and leaders to participate in an expert panel to design RJ medical education. A 3-round Delphi survey was distributed electronically to identify content for inclusion in an RJ curriculum. In the next 2 survey rounds, experts offered feedback and revisions and rated agreement with including content recommendations in the final curriculum. We calculated descriptive statistics to analyze quantitative data. A team with educational expertise wrote learning outcomes based on expert content recommendations. Findings: Of the 65 RJ advocates and leaders invited, 41 participated on the expert panel of the Delphi survey. In the first survey, the expert panel recommended 58 RJ content areas through open-ended response. Over the next 2 rounds, there was consensus among the panel to include 52 of 58 of these areas in the curriculum. Recommended content fell into 11 broad domains: access, disparities, and structural competency; advocacy; approaches to reproductive healthcare; contemporary law and policy; cultural safety; historical injustices; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and intersex health; oppression, power, and bias training; patient care; reproductive health; and RJ definitions. The 97 learning outcomes created from this process represented both unique and existing educational elements. Insights: A collaborative methodology infused with RJ values can bridge experts in advocacy and academics. New learning outcomes identified through this process can enhance medical education; however, it is just as important to consider education in RJ approaches to care as it is knowledge about that care. We must explore the pedagogic process of RJ medical education while considering that expertise in this area may exist outside of the medical community and thus there is a need to partner with RJ advocates. Finally, we expect to use innovative teaching methods to transform medical education and achieve an RJ focus

Black Feminist Sociology: perspectives and praxis

Black Feminist Sociology offers new writings by established and emerging scholars working in a Black feminist tradition. The book centers Black feminist sociology (BFS) within the sociology canon and widens is to feature Black feminist sociologists both outside the US and the academy. Inspired by a BFS lens, the essays are critical, personal, political and oriented toward social justice. Key themes include the origins of BFS, expositions of BFS orientations to research that extend disciplinary norms, and contradictions of the pleasures and costs of such an approach both academically and personally. Authors explore their own sociological legacy of intellectual development to raise critical questions of intellectual thought and self-reflexivity. The book highlights the dynamism of BFS so future generations of scholars can expand upon and beyond the book’s key themes.https://repository.usfca.edu/faculty_books_all/1075/thumbnail.jp