April 1, 2021
SPARK Reproductive Justice Now! Conference 2020
SPARK defines Reproductive Justice as a social justice movement rooted in the belief that individuals and communities should have the resources and power to make sustainable and liberatory decisions about their bodies, genders, sexualities, and lives. Reproductive Justice is pro-sex, sexuality, gender, queer bodies, access to abortion and contraception, birth rights and chosen families, and so much more! Reproductive justice is struggling towards liberation within and with community. To working towards a world free of reproductive violence and oppression – systems of oppressions, institutional control, eugenics, medicalization, and violence that works to uphold and reinforce dangerous and negative policies, practices, and culture. For us, reproductive justice is working in the South, which has a powerful history of resistance and organizing for power and change and a legacy of slavery and oppression that, in many ways, has set the context of how we understand bodies, politics, labor, and reproduction in the US. The South is ground zero for dangerous and restrictive legislative policies, but is also home to a number of fierce communities that intersect gender justice and LGBTQI sexual and health rights with racial justice and immigrants’ rights. We know what it means to build with community; centralizing the voices of the most marginalized and underrepresented. For SPARK, reproductive justice is the ability for Georgia and the South to continuously cultivate communities where we can all make sustainable and liberatory decisions about our bodies, genders, sexualities, families, and lives holistically and without shame or fear of policing. Join us in building and sustaining a powerful Southern reproductive justice movement!
A playlist of the conference’s recorded sessions can be viewed here.