DENYING WOMEN OUR FUTURES: NOT JUST ABOUT ABORTION RIGHTS

The mission of World Trust is to”… ignite courage and expand capacity to create a world free from racism.” So why are we writing now about the assault on women’s reproductive rights? Simple. Because the motivation behind these draconian measures is not to save the “unborn” or protect the “sanctity of life”. This isn’t about abortion rights. The is a pure exercise of power—to control women by controlling women’s bodies. The motivation is to deny women the right to create our own futures, to deny women voice in determining our own lives. The people who claim to be concerned about the “sanctity of life”, who profess so much concern for embryos and fetuses, are the same people who throw immigrant and refugee children in cages. They are the same people who kill black men and women for changing lanes without signaling, selling cigarettes on the street, or just being black.

And so the reproductive rights movement responds (thankfully), just as the immigrant rights movement has been responding (thankfully), just as the black rights movement has been responding (thankfully). And World Trust is responding because we understand that these fights—and so many others—are the same fight. The attacks come in different forms, with different targets, but the underlying drive is the same—to keep us focused on our “own” issues, to keep us separated from each other. To keep us from seeing that the path to liberation is full of bridges, that the bridges connect us, that we must build these bridges together, and that building a world of belonging means that your issues are my issues and my issues are your issues because they are, at root, the same issue.

The people who will be most directly and adversely impacted by all the new anti-choice laws are women of color and poor white women. But if you think “that’s not me”, think again. Every time one of “them” is hurt, disempowered, thrown off her chosen course, there is one less of “us”. When we talk about economic justice, racial justice, environmental justice; when we talk about immigrants’ rights, women’s rights, Indigenous rights; when we say Black Lives Matter; what we are really saying is we want our rights as human beings. We want to have agency over our own lives. We want to be co-creators of the world we want to live in. We need to move beyond what separates us to move towards our liberation. We are all in this together. All of us, or none.

There are many local and national organizations on the front line of the reproductive rights struggle, who can use your support.  Find listings at  Groundswell Fund  and National Network of Abortion Funds.