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Reproductive Justice Now! International Conference
08 May 2024–09 May 2024, 8:45 am–6:00 pm
This conference aims to stimulate new directions in scholarship and agenda-setting. It will bring together feminist, transnational and intersectional approaches to address the impact of gender, race, class and disability inequalities in reproductive and sexual health care and identify concrete solutions to address them.
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
Dr Carolina Topini (UCL), Dr Marlyse Debergh (U of Amsterdam), Dr Phoebe Martin (KCL)
Location
-
IAS Common GroundG11, ground floor, South WingUCL, Gower St, LondonWC1E 6BTUnited Kingdom
To register: https://framaforms.org/reproductive-justice-now-london-conference-registration-1704652273
Registrations are open until May 6th. Online attendees will receive a Zoom link a few days before the event.
Urgent conversations about reproductive justice have emerged around the world in recent years, following the decision to overturn Roe v Wade in the US and the legalisation and decriminalisation of abortion in some regions of Latin America. But reproductive justice is not limited to abortion: it is about choices to have children or not, eliminating coerced sterilisation; parenting in safe communities; access to safe contraception, healthcare and sex education; sexual and immigrant rights; welfare reforms; housing; environmental toxicity, etc. The reproductive justice movement, led by women of colour, emerged in the US in the 1990s. Its focus has since expanded to include the reproductive needs of disabled people, HIV/AIDS patients, women in prison, non- binary and trans people, and indigenous communities exposed to toxic contaminants.
Addressing reproductive injustices is more urgent than ever. Restrictive policies force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, seek unsafe clandestine abortion from predatory providers, attempt self-induced abortions, or even travel to less restrictive states, provinces, and countries to receive care, often over long distances and with significant safety risks. As a symptom of obstetric racism, there are higher rates of maternal morbidity and mortality among black and immigrant mothers. Ableist stereotypes and assumptions still influence medical counselling on prenatal diagnostics. Family planning and sexual health services in the Global South, often provided by organisations with strong links to donors in the Global North, remain entangled in a history of racism, colonialism and population control.
By providing a crucial venue for cross-disciplinary dialogue and network building, this international conference aims to stimulate new directions in scholarship and agenda-setting. It will bring together feminist, transnational and intersectional approaches to address the impact of gender, race, class and disability inequalities in reproductive and sexual health care and identify concrete solutions to address them.
From historical, sociological, anthropological, public health and activist perspectives, speakers will examine the situation in regions including the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, El Salvador, Argentina, USA, Haiti, Canada, India, China, Turkey and Palestine.
Image credit: cropped section, Rachael Romero, San Francisco Poster Brigade, Stop Forced Sterilization, original in 1978; edition in color, 2010.
About the Speakers
Stella Dadzie
Writer and feminist historian
Stella Dadzie is a published writer and feminist historian, best known for The Heart of the Race: Black Women's lives in Britain, which won the Martin Luther King Award for Literature in 1985 and was republished as a feminist classic by Verso in 2018. Her most recent book, A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery & Resistance was published by Verso in October 2020 to much acclaim. She is a founder member of OWAAD (Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent), a national umbrella group for Black women that emerged in the late 1970s as part of the British Civil Rights movement, and is seen as one of the “grandmothers“ of Black Feminism in the UK.
Dr Kalpana Wilson
Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Birkbeck, University of London
Her research explores issues of race/gender and racialisation in international development, global population policies, philanthrocapitalism, reproductive rights and justice, neoliberalism and transnational feminisms, with a particular focus on South Asia and its diasporas. She is the author of Race, Racism and Development: Interrogating History, Discourse and Practice (Zed Books, 2012), a book that raises compelling questions about contemporary imperialism and the possibilities for transnational political solidarity.