(Photo by Ted Eytan via The LatinX Project/CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED)
Quotes from this interview have been edited for clarity and readability.
Roe v. Wade legalized abortion across the United States, but it allowed restrictions that disproportionately harmed marginalized communities. Nearly 50 years later, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe, giving states full control over abortion laws. Many states quickly passed new bans or restrictions, leading to inconsistent abortion access and re-harming marginalized communities.
Evidently, legality alone has never guaranteed real reproductive freedom for everyone, but reproductive justice (RJ) reframes reproductive rights and centres the social, economic, and personal conditions that shape people’s reproductive decisions. It calls for a more inclusive, people-centred approach that goes beyond legality and grounds reproductive freedom in lived experience.
Centring Lived Experience in Reproductive Freedom
In an interview with Spheres of Influence, Loretta J. Ross mentioned that she and several Black women activists introduced the concept of reproductive justice. They did so after the mainstream feminist movement’s focus on reproductive choice failed to account for the structural inequalities shaping those choices.
“The inadequacy of the pro-choice, pro-life binary appalled us because it didn’t adequately represent the lived reality of Black women who faced many intersectional issues. Whether or not we had adequate housing, job security, a chance to get an education, a bedroom to put a child in, or housing insecurity, none of these issues were addressed by the binary.”
RJ draws inspiration from reproductive rights and social justice, arguing for every person’s right to have or not have children and to raise them in safe, healthy environments. As Ross emphasized in our interview, it is not just a policy stance—it is a framework.
“We spliced together the concept of social justice and reproductive rights to create reproductive justice as a framework because we felt that women make their decisions in the context of the human rights issues going on in their lives before pregnancy becomes an issue.”
Central to RJ is the principle of intersectionality, which applies to how systemic barriers like poverty, racial discrimination, immigration status, gender identity, and geography all impact whether someone can safely exercise reproductive freedom.
“When Indigenous women used the framework, they talked about sovereignty and treaty rights in a way that didn’t apply to those of us who were not Indigenous. When immigrant women use the framework, they’re generally talking about citizenship rights in a way that didn’t apply to those of use who were born with U.S. citizenship. As people adapt reproductive justice to their own lived circumstances, they tend to infuse it with an expanded meaning that particularizes it for them.”
This adaptability reflects one of RJ’s key strengths: it centres lived experience. The framework is relevant across individual and shared perspectives because reproductive freedom is grounded in lived realities.
Limitations to the Pro-Life/Pro-Choice Binary
“There are a number of people who define themselves as pro-life and take the position that they would not personally choose an abortion for themselves, but they wouldn’t stop somebody else from doing it. Also, there are pro-life people who believe in three of the four reproductive justice tenets, except for abortion. It’s usually not useful to oversimplify the terms pro-choice and pro-life, at least in the way the media would prefer us to.”
The pro-life/pro-choice language remains rigid in capturing the complexity of people’s views on abortion, which is often ignored in political and media narratives. When asked if the growing engagement with the reproductive justice framework—both among advocates and impacted communities—was shifting how we talk about abortion in the mainstream, Ross offered a thoughtful but clear perspective.
“The pro-choice/pro-life binary is actually appropriate if all you’re talking about is abortion rights. Reproductive justice was not designed to replace the conversation around the protection of abortion rights and access of or to them. It was designed to transcend them.”
This distinction matters. RJ does not overshadow, but instead broadens the abortion debate to include more comprehensive issues, like economic justice, access to healthcare, and other factors affecting reproductive health. Furthermore, abortion is often framed as a moral war in public and political discourse: pro-life versus pro-choice, good versus evil, life versus death. But that binary, Ross explained, is strategically useful to those currently with political power.
“The people who are opposed to human rights have used abortion as organizing principles to mobilize their base of hatred and fear and hold onto power, by whatever legal or illegal means necessary. Because they choose to organize in opposition to human rights issues, it’s going to dominate the media accounts, political discourse, and how people place themselves on either side of the lines being drawn in partisan conflicts.”
Reproductive Choice is Not That Simple
While partisan stances often shape how reproductive health is framed publicly, Ross illustrated that political language can be manipulated to reinforce simplistic, rigid narratives that overlook how people actually think, live, and engage with reproductive choice.
“I know people who are pro-choice who would never have an abortion, and there are people who are pro-life who have abortions. A lot of people do not welcome the thought that there could be complications or complexities to what we are dealing with. So, the media feeds into that narrative because it works for them.”
The mainstream media’s oversimplification of reproductive rights has serious consequences, especially for people whose lives exist at the intersection of multiple systemic barriers. For many Americans, the conversation around reproductive rights has never been just about abortion. Whether abortion is “legal,” it can still be inaccessible due to geography, poverty, or discrimination.
“That’s why we need reproductive justice as a holistic framework that looks at all of these issues together, not just whether or not someone can access an abortion.”
Oversimplifying language around reproductive rights does not only affect media narratives. It can also influence how political parties frame and use reproductive health to appeal to certain voters and gain political power.
Challenging Bipartisan Politics on Reproductive Health
Reproductive justice does not fit neatly into the agendas of either major U.S. political party. The Republican Party has become synonymous with anti-abortion legislation, even as the 2024 U.S. federal election revealed a growing disconnect between party leaders and many Republican voters, who in several conservative and swing states voted to protect or expand abortion access.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has fallen short in addressing bigger socioeconomic barriers limiting access to proper reproductive healthcare, despite supporting abortion rights.
Nonetheless, the political landscape has long been shaped by strategies that centre power, not people. For instance, Ross pointed to the Republican Party’s long-standing opposition to not just abortion, but also comprehensive sex education, contraception access, and broader human rights.
“They decided in the 1970s that the Republicans, who were all pro-choice back then, would become anti-choice. They wanted to appeal to the religious right and the segregationists. That’s when they formed the coalition, badly named ‘the moral majority’.”
She underscores the idea that even if people advocating for abortion rights gave these issues a completely neutral or meaningless label, the Republican Party would still oppose them — not because of specific rights, but to appeal to specific supporters at the expense of advancing human rights.
Yet, Ross acknowledged that the Democratic Party has not fully embraced the RJ framework, stating that “it’s easy to describe reproductive justice, but it’s hard to understand how to achieve it.”
This gap between language and action shows that legality does not guarantee reproductive freedom without considering diverse lived experiences. RJ challenges partisan politics that simplify and divide this way, insisting that people’s reproductive decisions deserve nuance, meaningful change, and actionable care from politicians who shape their legal rights.
From Reproductive Choice to Justice
On the ground, a growing wave of organizers, especially among younger generations, is pushing reproductive health advocacy beyond legal battles and toward community-based models and initiatives rooted in justice, safety, and care. Central to this shift is a move away from individual “choice” as framed in mainstream pro-choice discourse, toward one that centres access, safety, and dignity, grounded in lived experience. As Ross explained, the idea of reproductive choice presumes that all people have equal ability to act on their options, which is not true for many people.
“The pro-choice, pro-life binary didn’t address the conditions that were going on in the woman’s life before she had experienced an unplanned pregnancy, nor did it address the issues that she would be experiencing once the baby was born.”
Rather than abandoning the concept of choice, reproductive justice plants it within the realities that shape people’s ability to act, such as poverty, housing instability, gender-based violence, inadequate access to healthcare, and systemic racism.
“RJ founders felt that women make their decisions in the context of the social justice or human rights issues going on in their lives before the pregnancy even becomes an issue. If a person has solutions to those issues, they may turn an unplanned pregnancy into a wanted child.”
During the interview, Ross recalled volunteering as an abortion clinic escort for a 12-year-old girl who travelled from Illinois to Georgia with her mother, her mother’s boyfriend, and baby sister to obtain care:
“This child was so young and so traumatized that she was sucking her thumb the whole time. The mother had applied for help to come from Chicago to Atlanta, and the clinic paid for their travel costs. The mother came with a six-month-old baby, and it was her fifth child. She was only in her 20s. The mother was so preoccupied with her fifth pregnancy that she hadn’t noticed that her oldest daughter was getting sexually abused. And I was always suspicious of the boyfriend because, why was he hovering so much? If we paid for the mother and the daughter, who paid for the boyfriend to come and why did they prioritize bringing him?”
As Ross put it, this child—pregnant from sexual abuse—stood at the centre of overlapping harms: economic hardship, intergenerational trauma, and restricted reproductive choice, all while her suspected abuser remained disturbingly close, even accompanying her and her mother on the journey for care across state lines. This case captures the intersections RJ seeks to address: childhood and intrafamilial abuse, inadequate sex education, barriers to contraception, poverty, and legal obstacles that compelled a traumatized child to travel out of state for care without assurance of safety from their perpetrator.
“Reproductive justice isn’t just theory. It’s what it looks like when people suffer reproductive oppression or suppression — when they don’t have real choices that make sense, when they can’t decide for themselves whether they have sex, whether they have babies, or whether they have safety.”
RJ demands legal access to align with conditions where reproductive autonomy can be meaningfully realized. It offers more than a new vocabulary to conceptualize the ideal and real experiences of reproductive decision-making. It offers a new map, rooted in equity, not division; in care, not control; and in the lived experiences of those who have been denied real choice.
Reclaiming Reproductive Freedom
The binary debate of pro-life/pro-choice dominates the conversation around reproductive health in the U.S., but it does not truly reflect the complexity of most people’s lived experiences. Reproductive justice reframes reproductive freedom as a commitment to protecting everyone’s safety, dignity, and autonomy over their reproductive health. Ross’s contributions remind us that real justice must centre the lived experiences of those most impacted to help all, and that rights alone are not enough without access, care, and equity.
“Even at 15, I knew that I wasn’t going to let my abuser determine the trajectory of my life. I was able to think myself through, to claim a future for myself that, statistically, I probably should not have achieved. That gives me hope: that we can still think ourselves through to claim a future. I want to offer that chance to other Black girls in similar situations.”
That same spirit of determination is the heartbeat of RJ today. It is inspiring a new generation to imagine futures grounded not just in legality, but in justice, and to fight for real reproductive freedom in their daily lives.
Edited by Khushi Mehta
