From Rights to Justice: Women of Color Changing the Face of US Reproductive Rights Organizing

Zakiya Luna’s article focuses on how women of color organizations changed US reproductive rights organizing. It shows that reproductive justice was not a concept later invented by academia, but a political language emerging from organizing practice. When choice could not explain poverty, racialized medicine, forced sterilization, immigration status, and community violence, movements needed a broader framework.

The article is valuable because it analyzes movement language, coalition strategy, and institutional pressure together. Women of color organizations were not simply asking mainstream movements to become more inclusive. They were redefining the problem itself: reproductive freedom cannot be organized only around courts, clinics, and individual decisions. It must also confront how states, markets, and social services shape who can actually have a future.

For FemRes, this article is a movement-history node for reproductive justice. It shows how theory grows from grassroots organizing and pairs well with Ross’s theoretical article, Black feminism, reproductive rights, and social movement studies.