Keynote: »Reproductive Justice« von Loretta J. Ross
Past dates
1/30/22
1:00 PM
Reproductive Justice is a concept developed by Black feminists in the early 1990s in the United States, a good ten years after nearly 2,000 participants attended the 1983 Black Women's Health Issues Conference. A broad and diverse movement emerged in which various organizations including other communities of color began to use the concept. Reproductive justice recognizes that decisions about childbearing and parenthood are deeply rooted in social power relations. For example, ideologies of population control, the history and continuity of colonialism, racism, and sexism influence how self-determined individuals can be about these issues. Factors such as disability, gender identity, residency status, or sexual orientation are also critical to actual individual self-determination within systematic oppression. Loretta J. Ross is one of the co-founders of the concept. In her keynote, she will introduce its history and explain how reproductive justice can serve as a basis for intersectional alliances in contexts of institutional power relations.
Loretta J. Ross is an activist, public intellectual and professor. She joined the women's movement in 1978 by working at the first rape crisis center in the country, and is a co-founder of SisterSong. She speaks, trains, consults, and lectures on many issues including Reproductive Justice, Appropriate Whiteness, Human Rights, Violence Against Women, and Calling In the Calling Out Culture. She currently teaches about the call-out culture and white supremacy as a professor at Smith College. Ross is co-author of Reproductive Justice: An Introduction (2017), lead editor of Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundations, Theory, Practices, and Critique (2017), co-author of Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice (2004), amongst others, and has received numerous awards for her work.
