Reproductive Rights as Human Rights

Reveals both the promise and the pitfalls associated with a human rights approach to the women of color-focused reproductive rights activism of SisterSongHow did reproductive justice—defined as the right to have children, to not have children, and to parent—become recognized as a human rights issue? In Reproductive Rights as Human Rights, Zakiya Luna highlights the often-forgotten activism of women of color who are largely responsible for creating what we now know as the modern-day reproductive justice movement.Focusing on SisterSong, an intersectional reproductive justice organization, Luna shows how, and why, women of color mobilized around reproductive rights in the domestic arena. She examines their key role in re-framing reproductive rights as human rights, raising this set of issues as a priority in the United States, a country hostile to the concept of human rights at home.An indispensable read, Reproductive Rights as Human Rights provides a much-needed intersectional perspective on the modern-day reproductive justice movement.

Through careful analysis and deep, multi-method research, Luna brings to light the story of the struggle of Black women seeking to redefine the reproductive justice movement. In doing so, the book examines some of the most urgent questions of today: how do people come together to redefine their own liberation not only through rights granted by the state, but also in the ways they relate to each other? Further, how does their work push the boundaries of social change, helping us to reimagine a different world? In an uncertain world with yawning gaps between the world we want and the world we have, this book provides fresh insight that scholars and organizers alike desperately need., Zakiya Luna makes an essential contribution to the growing understanding of the crucial contributions women of color have made to historical and contemporary intersectional movements that embrace both anti-racism and feminism. She also tells a critical story of how the social movement organization SisterSong adapted international human rights discourse in the US domestic context to forge a struggle for reproductive justice., Reproductive Rights as Human Rights is a necessary contribution to the scholarship on the reproductive justice movement and the reader will come to understand the movement through Luna’s work.

Zakiya Luna is Dean's Distinguished Professorial Scholar in the Department of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice.