Hey #Roommates!
It’s Kersha from Planned Parenthood with a message about reproductive freedom and justice, and what YOU can do to protect and expand it. Reproductive justice, a term created by Black women in 1994, is the right to make decisions about our bodies, “have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”
You’ve heard people talking about reproductive justice for years, even if you didn’t know it. In “Keep Ya Head Up” Tupac rapped, “And since a man can’t make one [a baby], he has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one.” He was talking about reproductive justice. When you heard Nicki Minaj talk about why she chose to have an abortion, she was talking about reproductive justice.
The attacks on health care, Planned Parenthood, and people of color across the country make it clear that there is no reproductive justice without racial justice and no racial justice without reproductive justice. Planned Parenthood is speaking out and standing with our partners who fight for racial justice, because white supremacy affects ALL of us and our ability to determine our own reproductive destiny.
One in five women rely on us for care – meaning some of you look to Planned Parenthood to get your health and reproductive needs met. We need to stand up together to make sure that our doors stay open and people can get the care they need –– no matter what.
White supremacists have never been on the side of reproductive freedom. They want to continue this country’s long history of threatening our safety and control over our own bodies. Whether it’s being afraid to get health care out of fear of deportation or shaming Black women for exercising our right to self-determine and self-govern our bodies in ways that bring us pleasure and joy. This includes exploiting Planned Parenthood’s complicated history to drive deep wedges in our communities.
And it’s that same ideology that promotes intolerance, slut-shaming, xenophobia, sexism, stigma, transphobia and other forces that obstruct justice and block individual opportunity. That’s why Planned Parenthood launched the #IDEFY campaign, an effort to amplify the voices of young people who are fighting for a world of equity — where reproductive rights are human rights, and where EVERYONE has access to health care.
We hope you’ll join us and become a defier by texting ‘ROOMMATES’ to 22422.
Kersha Deibel
Defier in Chief
Planned Parenthood
