I'm sitting in the library at Concordia University. The sun has left us again, the clouds are back. Before I begin thesis revisions, I'm looking through a magnificent coffee table book called Gulag: Life and Death Inside the Soviet Concentration Camps. All I can think about is the relative arbitrariness of temporal vocabularies used to describe state domination, national domination, human domination. Invasion and domination and colonialism all bleed into each other somehow. How can we claim post-coloniality when we live in an age of cultural and social colonialism and control? De facto colonialism. How can we make that distinction and still honor the experiences and histories of those living in the aftermath of structured colonialism? How can we make sense of our places on each side of the equation, which is not so much an equation as a jumbled mess of contradictory truths?
The USSR was massive. It took up a lot of space, it swallowed up a lot of space, it spread over a vast amount of space. Is size it? Can we ascertain the effect of a thing by the size of it's influence? How can you measure the size of horror? It's not just big, it's something different. Or happiness? Or do feelings exist separately from spatial quantification? Where's the overlap?
We who trust women stand in solidarity with and support of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW!, SisterLove, Planned Parenthood of Georgia, and Feminist Women's Health Center to affirm our belief that every woman has the human right to decide if and when she will have a baby, and the right to parent the children she already has with the social supports necessary. In our struggle for reproductive justice, African American women have a unique history that we must remember in order to ensure bodily sovereignty, dignity, and collective uplift of our community. The choices that women of color make are based on their lived experiences in this country and reflect multiple oppressions, including race, class, and gender, and their efforts to resist them. It is unacceptable to speak to the needs of any woman, or her children without taking into consideration the realities that exist in her home and local community.
We affirm that an African American woman's ability to determine if and when she will have children demands that she control the conditions under which she will give birth and have the power to decide the spacing of her children. These freedoms speak to the power and necessity of the preventive care of women before they become pregnant and the importance of comprehensive sex education for all of our children to understand their human right to sexuality in an empowering and responsible way. It means fully funding public education, protecting the environment in all communities, and eliminating sexual violence for all women.
We affirm that an African American woman's ability to determine if and when she does not have children must include a full range of options including the right to have an abortion. For women of color the privilege to exercise this right all too often hinges on other factors in her home and community. Abortion must be approached in the context of the individual woman and the circumstances surrounding her, such as poverty, sexual abuse, or the lack of health care. To extract a woman from the context of her life dishonors her lived experiences and the plight of a broader community of people.
We affirm that African American women have the human right to parent the children they already have. To ensure the full enjoyment of this right, they must also have access to the social supports necessary to raise their children in safe environments and healthy communities, without fear of violence from individuals or intervention by the government. A continuum of care is essential to protect the lives of women and children. And we must prioritize the needs of children after birth. This includes funding education, investing in health care reform for all, ensuring food security and prioritizing the unification of our families through the provision of social supports to protect the most vulnerable.
Protecting women and children requires a commitment to these principles. It is a matter of reproductive health, reproductive rights, and ultimately Reproductive Justice.
