The Lack of Reproductive Justice = The Lack of a Safe Environment  

Justice can be seen, heard, felt and needed in many different situations. We most associate it with the criminal system. The need for Justice being demanded now, in all cases. The need for reproductive justice has been essential especially in the time where rights are under attack once more. Previous attacks on the movement being seen when cases like Roe V. Wade were presented to the national level. Currently an attack on Reproductive Justice would be the constant attacks on Planned Parenthood that has led to clinics being left without resources. The need for a safe environment intersects with reproductive justice. The three demands the Reproductive Justice movement being a person’s right to their bodily autonomy, the right to raise or not raise children and for there to be a place to parent the children we have in a safe and sustainable community. Reproductive Justice has been under attack for many years now. Taking up into the 1950’s for there to be essentially transformative for those constantly under attack.  

In Reproductive Justice: An Introduction by Loretta Ross, she talks about the Reproductive Justice movement going beyond just the highly exposed by media debate of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice, she talks about there being three primary principles that are fundamental for human experience.  

The fundamental definition as created by Sister Song in 1994  “the right to have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and healthy environments—[and] is based on the human right to make personal decisions about one’s life, and the obligation of government and society to ensure that the conditions are suitable for implementing one’s decisions.” as stated in the article Indigenous Peoples of North America: Environmental Exposures and Reproductive Justice.  Of course, there has always been different circumstances that could always impact the way these are fulfilled. A community that was always been under attack has been the First Nations People, Indigenous People. Indigenous People often don’t have legal, political and economic means to resist the placement of Industrial Pollution on their land and home. The Authors support this claim by providing an example of a study done in the community of Akwesasne, a tribe located at the junction of New York, Ontario and Quebec. “At Akwesasne, a midwife pushed for health studies because of concerns of local mothers about the number of miscarriages in the community and the possibility of contaminated breast milk. Studies found that Mohawk women who ate local fish had higher levels of contaminants in their breast milk than a control group” this only serving to prove their point on how exactly environment impacts their rights to reproduce. The authors purpose in writing this article was to introduce the general audience to a subject that many had not been aware of. There is a brief mentioning in the article about how the First Nations people don’t have the legal, political and economic means to resist the pollution on their home, this could be very new information for the audience targeted. The stance of the article being that Indigenous people often must fight their own battles and have been suffering under the power of the industrial companies because of the lack of resources offered to them by governments and organizations. The general tone of the article written by Elizabeth Hoover, Katsi Cook, Ron Plain, Kathy Sanchez, Vi Waghiyi, Pamela Miller, Renee Dufault, Caitlin Sislin and David O. Carpenter was urgent and very frustrated. These would be the words used to describe the tone because of how they began to word their information. The authors began to go back and connect examples of issues and how they had impacted one of the communities that they had done studies around. It also gave a sense of being frustrated because they had known these issues had been going on but the lack of response from the government and the media had led to this crisis between reproductive justice and an environmental crisis impacting native communities without there being anything to help or protect them from this. The communities being impacted not being able to parent the children that they have currently in a safe and sustainable environment because of the pollution and lack of change being done. The authors had chosen to publish this article on a website for there to be ultimate access to it, the different communities being impacted also serving for the reader to know what is going on in other parts of the world. The authors also served this article as more so of an informative article rather than an op-ed or anything that would imply opinion. The reason for this would be for the readers to know that there weren’t any opinions to be said, the article was purely facts based because it was in fact happening to marginalized communities like the Anishinaabe, the SLI Yupik, the Tewa, the Oglala Lakota people, the Mohawk Nation and many others who weren’t mentioned. The language used by the author was persuasive in getting then readers to investigate just how Indigenous people were getting impacted and in providing names for certain tribes made it easier for readers to be able to do research on their own.  

Another marginalized community that doesn’t get mentioned in media around the subject of Reproductive Justice is the Immigrant Community. There has been a mention of them regarding how they’re being treated at the border but how that plays into their reproductive rights doesn’t get talked about. As stated in this report written by Medical Patent Law Weekly “Our qualitative data showed that an immigration raid has financial and psychological effects on immigrant families and that a raid may impact reproductive autonomy because people are fearful of these impacts.” This clearly stating how the fear of being impacted by the Immigration Raids played part in whether a person wanted to or not have children, forcing them to choose to not have a child, stripping away their right to choose. This report had been done with a purpose for scholars to be able to gather more information of the study done prior to concluding their searches. They had a tone that agreed with the prior article, it was urgent for people to know and understand the impact of these issues on these communities. They had also chosen this genre to be a report because it was fact based over emotional. They presented data more than opinions, it was very informative compared to the other article surrounding reproductive justice. The medium chosen for this report was also a website, the access of anyone being able to read it made it easier for people to connect both the study done and the report on the study together. The audience meant to be targeted by this report was scholars who wanted information on the study done or scholars who were searching just how much the Immigration crisis was impacting immigrants themselves. There was no clear stance that the article had taken, it seemed very neutral although it emphasized just how much psychological damage was being placed on immigrant because of the fear of being caught in an Immigration raid. The language in the report used wasn’t very influential, it was very technical when it comes to reports.  

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