Reflection on the Perinatal Incarceration Learning Summit

by Emily Bullins, NARAL Pro-Choice NC NPIP Intern

On Thursday, May 31^st, I attended the Perinatal Incarceration Summit alongside Lynne, Tara, Nicole, and Linda from NARAL Pro-Choice NC. The conference was hosted by a collection of advocacy groups including SisterSong, NARAL Pro-Choice NC, MomsRising, and several other groups fighting for reproductive justice for women who are and have been incarcerated. One of the main focuses of this summit was an anti-shackling campaign led by SisterSong. This conference consisted of several panels that covered action plans, best practices for advocacy, and featured a panel of formerly incarcerated women who shared their lived experiences of being pregnant in prison.

This conference was actually my first day as one of the NARAL Pro-Choice NC summer interns! I found it to be a very helpful reminder of how expansive reproductive justice work can be. To be completely honest, reproductive justice for people who are incarcerated was something I had not considered when thinking about what reproductive justice looks like. I was largely unaware of the neglect and abuse of many incarcerated people in regards to their reproductive health. SisterSong raised a particularly eye-opening issue to my attention through their anti-shackling campaign. Incarcerated people who are pregnant are shackled throughout their pregnancy and often times during labor as well. This can be an extraordinarily traumatizing process to give birth while shackled because it deprives pregnant people of any agency or bodily autonomy while giving birth. Those at the summit, including myself and our NARAL Pro-Choice NC team, seemed to all agree that shackling a pregnant person is dehumanizing and degrading.

I also want to bring attention to SisterSong’s anti-shackling efforts because I found it to be a great example of direct action within an abolitionist framework. As a Women’s and Gender Studies major at UNC, I have read many different works of feminist theory. For the most part, I found the pieces insightful but lacking direct action plans. I believe there must be a symbiotic relationship between theory and direction action, and that they cannot be separated from one another. SisterSong’s advocacy provided exactly such. While we were able to theorize alternatives to the penal system, rather than focus on reform, we were also able to discuss the immediate actions needed to advocate for those currently incarcerated.

Panelists from SpiritHouse, YWCA of Greensboro, and SisterSong (L-R) discuss reproductive justice and activist strategies.

The conference was incredibly informative and its speakers and attendees alike brought so much wisdom to the table. I was very satisfied by the insistence of panelists and our hosts to raise the voices of those with lived experiences. It was a powerful reminder to remember that in public service, the question to ask is “What do you need?” not “What do I think you need?”  Our speakers included several women who had been formerly incarcerated, and I was so grateful that they would share their stories.  I believe there is no greater evidence for injustice than lived experience. In my academic career, I have learned that science and facts, though widely accepted as hard truths, can be manipulated to explain certain phenomena or promote specific goals. This is why I find personal testimony to be such a vital part of understanding why reproductive justice advocacy is needed. The stories of these women cannot be denied and were clear proof that we need to continue to work towards dismantling oppressive systems and empowering people who are incarcerated to have access to the full rights to which they are entitled.

Additionally, I was able to learn about what language to use when discussing perinatal justice for incarcerated people. A label like inmate, offender, and prisoner disempower people to be self-advocates and to know and practice the rights to which they are entitled. Also, words like criminal pass a judgement onto these people when, most of the time, we are not fully aware of their circumstances. In our advocacy, it is important to serve people without judgement or bias. I was unaware that terms like “incarcerated person” or “person who is incarcerated” are preferred to inmate. Panelists also used language that illustrated how dehumanizing and unjust aspects of the penal system can be. For example, prison cells were referred to as cages. The intentional use of that language was a clear way to frame our conversation as one with the goal of abolition. For more information and discussion about the language used to describe incarcerated people, I recommend Inmate. Prisoner. Other. Discussed by Blair Hickman and Inmate. Parolee. Felon. Discuss by Bill Keller, both published by The Marshall Project.

We ended the conference in song led by SisterSong’s Executive Director, Monica Raye Simpson. This was a great way to conclude a day of powerful coalition building and to energize us for the next steps in our work. Overall, the conference expanded my understanding of reproductive justice and motivated me to continue as an advocate for equal and equitable access to reproductive health care for all.

Asheville Rocked for Roe!

by Kelli Early, 2017-2018 Campus Leader at UNC Asheville

Roe v. Wade turned 45 this year, and with its anniversary brings celebration of its precedents that allow people greater bodily autonomy, but also the reality that Roe’s mission is under attack.

This is no surprise to North Carolinians.  Since Roe, North Carolina has been a testing ground for national anti-choice legislation.  While reproductive advocates successfully defeated a recent proposed federal 20-week abortion, sadly, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a 20-week ban in North Carolina in 1973, the same year that Roe v. Wade was decided.  These early attacks on abortion access in North Carolina were followed with abstinence-only-until-marriage education, which a recent government evaluation found has no effect on teen behavior.

And since the 1970s, organizations like NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina have defended North Carolinians’ abortion access in the courtroom, the streets, and in intimate spaces like clinics or classrooms where the impacts of these oppressions are felt.

Stigma and shame are prevalent social effects of criminalizing abortion and sexuality.  That’s why this anniversary of Roe v. Wade, NARAL Pro-Choice NC hosted the 2nd Annual Rock for Roe benefit show to dance, celebrate, and raise funds to continue our defense of reproductive rights.

The evening included a raffle of wonderful prizes, ranging from concert tickets at the Orange Peel to a YWCA membership, procured with the help of Development Director Toni Curry and Board Member Monroe Gilmour.  The audience was treated with live music by Big Sound Harbor, a local band in Asheville who became experts at raffling our prizes and fundraising another year of resistance!

Dulci, Big Sound Harbor lead singer, fabulously calling raffle prize winning tickets

While attendees walked between tables of prizes, NARAL Pro Choice NC’s Advocacy and Organizing Manager Lynne Walter offered people buttons, stickers, and literature as tools to spread knowledge about reproductive advocacy in North Carolina.  Participants were able to sign a petition against additional 20-week abortion bans and encouraged to take action after the event.

It is vital that community members on a local and state level come together to share stories, challenges, and kinship to sustain our movement for reproductive freedom, because, ultimately, we are fighting for each other’s lives.  Since 1 in 4 U.S. women will have an abortion in her lifetime, the work of NARAL Pro-Choice NC and all other reproductive justice organizations must continue so that North Carolina’s dark history of sexism, racism, and homophobia don’t become our future!

Chalking for Roe: How Small Acts of Engagement Make a Difference

by Angelina Kianka and Esther Fiore, 2018 Campus Leaders at UNCW

In honor of the 45^th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Esther and I chalked UNCW’s campus to promote awareness.  We wrote dozens of pro-choice messages in areas that see the highest foot traffic, such as in front of Randall Library and in the common areas by the Student Center.  Our messages included “Our Bodies, Our Choice,” “Celebrating 45 Years of Roe v. Wade,” and “Keep Your Laws Off My Body #45YearsOfRoe.”  We chalked on a Sunday evening to ensure that we would have minimal disruptions, and because the anniversary happened to fall on a Monday.

In my classes on Monday, I overheard students talking about the chalk messages and even walked by some students taking photos of the messages.  The chalking also garnered the attention of the Women’s Studies Resource Center.  I went to their office to pick up some NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina swag, and the women at the office expressed their appreciation for our pro-choice efforts.  Chalking is an eye-catching, inexpensive way to communicate an idea while facilitating the opportunity for dialogue.  There’s no denying that it got students and faculty chatting, and it was a great way to kick off the semester!

Later in the week, Esther and I attended a #MeToo panel.  We distributed NARAL Pro-Choice NC materials and collected names of students interested in joining the Feminist Student Alliance.  I’m thrilled to see UNCW supporting efforts to discuss sexual harassment and assault, and the panel has inspired us to capitalize on the momentum of the #MeToo movement and plan some events surrounding sexual assault awareness.  The panel was even featured on a local news station—here’s a link of the segment!

January has taught us that a little can go a long way when it comes to activism.  Igniting awareness on the campus community is crucial.  We’ve got some ambitious ideas for the upcoming months, and we’re excited to see the impact we’ll have within our community.  Stay tuned!

Abortion storytelling as artivism

by Molly Burchins, 2017-2018 Campus Leader at NC State University

This November, as a Campus Leader at NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina, I received an incredible opportunity to work with Poppy Liu, founder of Collective Sex, and Amelia Bonow, co-founder of #ShoutYourAbortion, on bringing their abortion storytelling program to NC State.  This program was brought to communities and campuses across North Carolina in order to bring abortion out of the political realm by starting a new conversation.  These two organizations have both done incredibly important work around destigmatizing abortion, and empowering people to tell their own stories.

#ShoutYourAbortion was founded in 2015 after the hashtag went viral and enabled thousands of people to share their abortion stories.  SYA empowers people to tell their own stories on their own terms, and aims to humanize and normalize the experience of abortion.  Collective Sex is a storytelling initiative and an all-femme production company that aims to “decolonize storytelling” by destigmatizing stories about sex, body, intimacy and identity.  Their project, the short film Names of Women, depicts a first person account of an abortion experience, produced through the lens of healing and spirituality.

Their idea for this program was to give people a chance to hear and share abortion stories, and to discuss the complexities around abortion access in a way that increases compassion and empathy.  Along with their program, I also had the idea to bring Poppy and Amelia to my campus for an afternoon discussion with a smaller group of students.  Because my awesome professor let me hijack our class for the day, this discussion ended up taking place in my Feminist Theories class, and allowed students who were studying the theory behind this kind of advocacy work to see the theory in action.  This was a really exciting opportunity for my classmates, because they were able to talk to Poppy and Amelia about their work in a more intimate setting.  I couldn’t have asked for a better discussion, and everyone was able to walk away with a new perspective on this work.

 

Later that evening, we hosted their 90-minute program, in which Poppy and Amelia discussed their respective approaches to creative abortion storytelling as a form of activism.  This program included a showing of the short film Names of Women, which was produced by Collective Sex, and a few of SYA’s digital abortion stories, and aimed to enhance creative storytelling as a form of “artivism” (art as activism) that helps to depoliticize and re-humanize discussions around abortion.  Because the program was about abortion, there was a lot of hesitation from university staff members to advertise this program to their students, and this really affected the program’s attendance.  Regardless of the small audience, we were able to modify the program and still create incredibly meaningful conversations around abortion.

This program, along with the two incredible people who created it, will be returning for another Bible Belt tour in the spring.  I’m really looking forward to hosting this program again and making sure that these conversations reach more and more students!

#BlackLivesMatter, and Black Health Matters, too: Reproductive Justice

by Anna Katz, 2017-2018 Campus Leader at Duke University

This November, I had the privilege of attending the first annual Black Health Matters Conference at Harvard University.  Given my work as a NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina Campus Leader and love for all things sexual health, I was particularly looking forward to Saturday’s panel Who and How: Sexual Health Activism for Our Most Underserved Communities.  As I ponder what shape my budding career might take, I am always thrilled to hear the varying ways activists approach this critical work.  With panelists working in academic, government, and the nonprofit sector, the event promised to offer several unique perspectives on sexual and reproductive health.

But perhaps most exciting was the opportunity to attend a reproductive health event that centered and amplified the voices of four Black women leaders in the sexual health field.  Mainstream reproductive rights activism historically sidelined women of color, trans women, poor women—virtually anyone who didn’t reflect middle- and upper-class white leadership.  Frustrated with this marginalization, a group of Black women created their own movement, coining the term “reproductive justice” in 1994.  Now a national leader in reproductive justice, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective defines reproductive justice as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”  To ensure that these rights are universally recognized, they believe, we must analyze power systems, address intersecting oppressions, center the most marginalized, and build coalitions across issues and identities.

In doing this work, we must first contextualize sexual and reproductive health activism within a history of reproductive oppression.  Our nation has a broad and shameful history of sexual and reproductive coercion of Black folks and other communities of color, contributing to an abiding distrust of health practitioners and organizations like Planned Parenthood.  From the forced reproduction of enslaved African and African American women to the coercive sterilizations of the American Eugenics Movement, from J. Marion Sim’s surgical experimentation on enslaved women to the non-consensual extraction of Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cells, from contraceptive pill trials on Puerto Rican women to the infamous “Tuskegee Syphilis Study,” folks of color have continuously been stripped of bodily autonomy, often for the purpose of “advancing” reproductive science.  The generational trauma of such violating practices cannot be minimized; as activists, we must acknowledge our nation’s ugly histories and recognize where the mainstream reproductive rights movement has failed the most vulnerable.  The panelists echoed SisterSong’s push for centering those who have been marginalized and emphasized that paying lip service to historically subjugated groups is not enough. “Activism is a doing, not a saying,” explained panelist Jill Smith, HIV/STI Project Manager at the Maryland Department of Health.

I am proud to be working with NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina, an organization that is committed to serving all North Carolinians and prioritizing those disproportionately impacted by harmful policies.  In an attempt to echo this commitment on Duke’s campus, I am building partnerships with groups that tend to be excluded from reproductive health conversations.  I am thrilled to be kicking off next semester with a sexual and reproductive health trivia night in collaboration with The Bridge, an online community for Black and Latina women.  Through such coalition-building, perhaps we can build an on-campus reproductive justice movement that is truly inclusive and intersectional.