Reproductive Justice and Public Health Critical Race Praxis frameworks guide EMBRACE to address the behavioral, clinical, social, and structural factors that drive long-standing racial inequities in pregnancy-related morbidity and mortality.
What is Reproductive Justice?
Reproductive Justice asserts the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy through sexuality, gender, work, and reproduction. People can only achieve that right when they possess the full economic, social, and political power and resources to make healthy decisions about their bodies, families, and communities in every area of life.
At the core of Reproductive Justice is the belief that all people hold the human right to:
- Maintain personal bodily autonomy;
- Have children;
- Not have children;
- Nurture the children we have in a safe and healthy communities.
A group of Black women founded the Reproductive Justice movement in 1994, after growing frustrated by the mainstream “pro-choice” movement’s failure to reflect the realities of women of color. They gathered in Chicago ahead of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. Recognizing the need for a more inclusive, human rights-based framework, they launched reproductive justice as a movement that combines reproductive rights with social justice, and centers the lived experiences of Black women, Indigenous women, women of color, and trans* people.
These founders, who called themselves Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice, introduced reproductive justice to the public through a historic statement in The Washington Post and Roll Call. In 1997, they established SisterSong to build a national, multi-ethnic coalition around this vision. Rooted in intersectionality and long-term systemic change, the RJ movement continues to challenge inequities at the intersections of race, gender, class, and identity—demanding justice, dignity, and full bodily autonomy for all.
What is Public Health Critical Race Praxis?
Public Health Critical Race Praxis supports the study of contemporary racial phenomena, challenges disciplinary conventions that may inadvertently reinforce social hierarchies, and provides tools for racial equity approaches to knowledge production. Grounded in critical race theory, Public Health Critical Race Praxis aims to move beyond merely documenting health inequities to understand and disrupt the power hierarchies that uphold them. PHCR adapts CRT to the field of public health, which enables researchers to use CRT in health equity research.