2024 Reproductive Justice Symposium: Moving Towards Action

Morning Keynote

Before, During, and After: Reproductive Justice and the Patient ExperienceSpeaker: Nicole Clark

This plenary session delves into the dynamics of patient-provider interactions in clinical settings, using Reproductive Justice as a strategy to understand the before, during, and after of a patient's experience when accessing sexual and reproductive health services. Through personal examination and application, this plenary illuminates how providers can examine clinical policies, practices, procedures, and how they engage patients to foster a more just and inclusive healthcare experience.

Morning Breakout Sessions

Breakout Option 1: Incarceration of Women & Girls and the Intersection of Reproductive Justice Speaker: Andrea James, JD

Three core values of reproductive justice are the right to have a child, the right to not have a child, and the right to parent a child or children in safe and healthy environments. The feminist movement has been the unwavering defenders of these rights, although it has left behind the fight on behalf of incarcerated women and girls. Still today major leading reproductive justice organizations are not willing to engage with or support campaigns to stop the incarceration of women and girls, or even to include incarcerated women and girls as a focal point of their advocacy. In this workshop we will explore the state of incarceration of women and girls in the country, the overall failures of the healthcare system for incarcerated women and girls, and the inhumane and dangerous conditions for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women and girls resulting from the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Breakout Option 2: Why Reproductive Health is an Economic Justice Issue

Topic One: Reproductive Rights: A Building Block for Economic Democracy, Speaker: Dr. Alexandra Piñeros Shields

Two of the central goals of economic justice are the promotion of economic democracy and a solidarity economy. These goals are impossible to achieve unless people, especially those who have been historically marginalized and exploited, including women, poor people, and people of color, are able to exercise full rights along all the lines of agency, including bodily autonomy. This presentation will explore the ways that full reproductive rights are fundamental for women, especially poor women and women of color, to active participation in economic decision-making at the individual and community level.

Topic Two: When Contraceptive Access Becomes State-Sponsored Coercion: Recognizing Eugenics and Social Darwinism in Contemporary Public Health Practice, Speaker: Dr. Elizabeth Janiak

This presentation will describe the recent rise in government-sponsored contraceptive access initiatives, highlighting instances in which the rhetoric surrounding these initiatives and their implementation practices have echoed eugenicist ideas. We will explore why access to contraception is essential to, but not sufficient for, achieving economic justice, and what policies states can implement to directly support financial wellbeing rather than relying on contraceptive access as a panacea.

Breakout Option 3: Building High-Trust Relationships Speaker: Tajan B. Renderos, MPH

As a Clinician, building trust isn't just a choice; it's the cornerstone of client-centered relationships that can impact reproductive health decision-making and access. As an Administrator it's essential to your team's success. “Build High Trust Relationships” explores the key drivers of high trust relationships and includes a highly interactive activity to equip you with the skills needed to evaluate trust in your workplace relationships as well as concrete strategies to build more trust with colleagues or clients.

Afternoon Breakout Sessions

Breakout Option 1: No Bodymind Left Behind: Implementing Disability Justice Principles Speakers: Aida Manduley, LICSW & Bianca Laureano, PhD

As our interconnected peoples experience mass disabling events like pandemics and war, it is imperative we include disability justice in our approaches to building, creating, and implementing care. Embodying our commitments to justice and public wellbeing requires more than just good intentions; we are here to help you move toward greater action. Building an accessible world where disabled people have and maintain autonomy is possible! In this session we will discuss and identify actionable steps for advancing disability justice in our communities and in the ones we serve. Participants will leave with knowledge of disability justice principles, resources to consult, concrete interventions they can start practicing immediately, and longer term steps toward our collective liberation and support. Let’s start today and practice interdependence by wearing masks in this session led by two disabled educators who are also long-time activists and cultural workers! Masks are offered before entering.

Slides from the session can be found here.

Breakout Option 2: You Are Rose That Grows From The Concrete Facilitator: Jason M. Cruz, MA, ATR

In this session, you will have time to "Make Art Stuff". You will use your words and stories with a mix of found and new materials to create and design a one-of-a-kind flora. With simple and accessible supplies you will create a never seen or encountered flora. You already have the lived experience, no green thumb is needed. The combination of Community, Beats, and creativity is all you will need for this workshop. Yes, YOU ARE ENOUGH to "Make Art Stuff.

Breakout Option 3: Care Not Complicity: Disrupting Criminalization of Pregnant Patients in Healthcare Settings Speakers: Centering Equity, Race, and Cultural Literacy in Family Planning (CERCL-FP)

While the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision, which eliminated the Constitutional right to abortion, has brought the criminalization of abortion care to the forefront in the public narrative, the criminalization of people seeking health care is not new. In fact, health care institutions and health care providers have not lived up to the oath they take to “Do No Harm,” and instead act as agents of the State. From the arrest and prosecution of those seeking to self-manage their own abortion care to drug testing of people during pregnancy without their consent, health care providers frequently participate in the initiation and facilitation of criminalization of the patients they are charged with caring for. In this session, we will (1) explore the longstanding connection between the medical industrial complex and the prison industrial complex, as well as its implications for care (2) discuss examples of the ways that criminalization occurs within health care systems, and (3) identify ways that health care providers can interrupt these practices.

Afternoon Plenary

Power to Practice: Connecting Joy to Meaningful Work Speakers: Kai Williams and Cedric Pulliam, PhD

What brings you meaning in your work? What are the moments and the stories that bring you joy? Participants will reflect on personal elements related to joy, motivation, purpose, and meaning in their self-led journey at the interaction of RJ and SRH.

Slides from their session can be found here.