On Tuesday evening, about 30 people attended a panel on reproductive justice at the Ford School of Public Policy, hosted by the American Civil Liberties Union Undergraduate Chapter, the Michigan Institute for Progressive Policy and the College Democrats at the University of Michigan. In honor of Women’s History Month, speakers Anna Kirkland, Emily Peterson, Bonsitu Kitaba and Allie Ingalls discussed their educational and professional experiences in reproductive justice, touching on topics such as abortion, contraception, LGBTQ+ rights and health care in the United States.
The speakers discussed the history of reproductive access and how President Donald Trump’s administration has begun to attack policies regarding these rights since his inauguration in January. Emily Peterson, lecturer of women’s and gender studies, began the panel by explaining the historical ties between external control over women’s bodies and slavery.
“You can’t start talking about how the government is involved in our reproductive decisions and our bodies without talking about slavery in the U.S.,” Peterson said. “A couple of key things to remember during the times of slavery was the idea that reproductive labor was expected. We expected enslaved women to produce children. We valued them based on their fertility, and we also had laws that reinforced the idea that if you were born to an enslaved woman, your child was also enslaved.”
Peterson also broke down current issues surrounding immigration that are fundamental to understanding the intersection between racism and attempting to control female reproduction.
“That’s what I mean by using borders to control reproduction; that’s a historical example,” Peterson said. “Today, that looks like something called the white supremacist replacement theory. That’s the racist, xenophobic, anti-semitic, Islamophobic idea that people coming across our southern border, not from the North, are overproducers. And if we let them in, they are going to have so many children that they will replace the white population. So this concept of tying immigration to reproduction, there’s nothing new about that, we’re just seeing a new version of it.”
Bonsitu Kitaba, ACLU Deputy Legal Director, followed Peterson’s lesson on the history of reproductive justice by explaining the recent legal action in the state of Michigan to protect reproductive rights. While action to overturn Roe v. Wade slowly started to emerge in 2019, Kitaba and Planned Parenthood worked to protect abortion access in Michigan. Before the 2022 Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson, Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit in 2022 against an amendment to the Michigan Constitution that would completely ban abortion in the state in preparation for the ruling.
“So in April 2022, right after January 2022, we filed a lawsuit on behalf of Planned Parenthood of Michigan, urging the court to repeal the 1931 abortion ban so that it did not take effect when Dobbs was decided,” Kitaba said. “We didn’t know Dobbs was going to come out in June, but it did, and we got that injunction. And so when Dobbs was decided, Michigan was a safe haven for abortion access.”
Anna Kirkland, U-M professor of women’s and gender studies, spoke to the crowd about a case concerning a ban on gender-affirming treatments in Tennessee that will be seen by the Supreme Court this year.
“They’re going to rule whether that violates the equal protection clause on the basis of sex, because you have to know the person’s sex, whether they’re allowed to have this care or not,” Kirkland said. “If you’re (transgender) you can’t have hormones and puberty blockers, but if you’re not trans, then you can. If you’re doing it, you know, to align with the gender you were assigned at birth, that’s okay. But if you’re trans, that’s not okay. So what they’re trying to do is make it very difficult or impossible to be trans.”
At the end of the event, Allie Ingalls, program organizer at Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan, called for attendees to take action against the actions of the Trump administration, encouraging young people to push through their discomfort and to stay motivated.
“The things that we see moving forward are going to be incredibly hard, and I know that they are also going to be incredibly tiresome for all of us to keep fighting over and over and over again,” Ingalls said. “I want to be clear that these attacks are legally shaky and wildly unpopular with most Americans. When they do come, we’ll be ready. We’ll be in the streets and at every door, fighting like hell to mitigate the harm..”
Public Health junior Abigail O’Connell, said in an interview with The Michigan Daily she decided to attend the event because of the importance and intersectionality of reproductive justice.
“For me, personally, reproductive justice means everything, it means personal autonomy,” O’Connell said. “Reproductive justice ties into so many other topics, it ties into Queer rights and it really ties into protecting our environment. Because if you think about it, the exploitation of someone’s body, the exploitation of someone’s sexuality and the exploitation of our Earth are all interconnected.”
LSA junior Bebe Butters said they appreciated the sentiment that students can enact change through community organizing rather than through legislation.
“One of the topics that the speakers touched on that was really impactful for me was the notion that you don’t have to just be a law student to enact change in your community,” Butters said. “I think sometimes we think like, ‘Oh, I’m not qualified,’ but it definitely added to my perspective of who community organizing applies to and what that means for us as undergraduates.”
Daily News Contributor Hayley Weiss can be reached at hayweiss@umich.edu.
