Reproductive Justice | VivirLatino

Posts Tagged ‘reproductive justice’

Latino Heritage Month Reminders

7:12 pm By BiancaLaureano · Arts|Culture · Comments Off

5 Oct 2011

Lots going on regarding Latino Heritage Month, and Meagan, as usual, did a fab job of reminding readers of the complexity of this month’s celebrations. I wanted to highlight a few things for VL readers:

30 Days of Latino Heritage Tumblr page which Maegan created in 2009 is still up and running! You may submit something that represents Latino heritage to you and see what others have posted and shared.

LatiNegr@s Tumblr page is also still up and running! This was something I co-created after being inspired by Maegan’s 30 Days of Latino Heritage Tumblr and highlights/centers the experiences, realities, narratives, testimonies, and representations of LatiNegr@s/Afr@Latin@s/BlakTin@s/etc. You may also submit something to this Tumblr page as well. There is also a Twitter account that you may follow @BeingAfroLatino.

October 15 is National Latino AIDS Awareness Day and we encourage you to get tested for HIV to know your status! There are many was to find FREE and quick testing sites all over the US. Place your zip code at this site and it will give you locations in that area.

And a shameless plug, over at RH Reality Check, I’m focusing on Latin@s whose work impacts the reproductive justice movement. I did this last year as well and highlighted 5 folks and I plan to do the same this year as well. Posting is not on a specific schedule so check back for any updates.

Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice : The Real Problem with Choice

12:39 pm By Maegan La Mala · Health|Immigration|Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice|Women · 6 Comments

5 Aug 2011

As part of the Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health asks participants in it’s blog carnival : What’s the REAL problem with scapegoating immigrant women?

I wrote a very brief intro yesterday, questioning how we frame the question even and who gets to speak for themselves vs. who is spoken for.

My family is an immigrant family. I have taken heat from other Latinas for claiming this, for claiming being the first generation in my Puerto Rican family to be born in the United States. It is often raised that Puerto Rico is part of the United States, so that the migration patterns of the women who came before me, my tias and later my abuela, who came to New York looking for work in the garment industries, mujeres who came before their husbands to work in sweatshops run buy famous fashion designers, mujeres who now can barely see – and not just because of age, don’t matter or worse, don’t exist. As amiga Bianca Laureano wrote in her submission to the blog carnival :

Many folks think those narratives are not worthy or important, when really they have impacted me! And don’t I matter? Don’t the women with similar testimonios and experiences matter?

Bringing this back to the issue of immigrant women and reproductive justice, the buzzwords, according to mainstream (read white led) feminism and non-profits, is choice and access. The choice of how to prevent and plan pregnancies, allegedly revolutionized by the birth control pill, used Puerto Rican women of my grandmothers’ generation as the perfect test subjects. When our uteri weren’t being experimented on, they were being forcibly sterilized. My tias and my grandmothers weren’t accused of harboring anchor babies in their wombs, turning the possibility of “poor brown babies” being born as U.S. citizens as threats because of the colonial occupation of Puerto Rico sure sounds pretty damn close.

2nd annual Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice – Caminamos: Justice for Immigrant Women, August 1-5, 2011

8:51 am By Maegan La Mala · Activism|Immigration|Justice|Politics|Women · 1 Comment

4 Aug 2011

On behalf of VivirLatino, I am proud to be a part of the 2nd annual Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice. This year’s theme is Caminamos: Justice for Immigrant Women.

Co-sponsored by California Latinas for Reproductive Justice (CLRJ) and the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR), Latinas across the country will elevate the voices and experiences of immigrant women at community forums, letter writing events and signature collection campaigns in California, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, New York and Texas and a “What’s the Real Problem” online Blog Carnival 2011. Activists will also be collecting stories of immigrant women to change the existing negative ways in which immigrant women are viewed in the media and society.

“Mean-spirited law enforcement, workplace exploitation, criminalization of basic life including education and health care are just a few of the challenges that have forced immigrant women into the shadows and ignore the often vital, positive role they play in communities across the country”, said Maria Elena Perez, interim Executive Director, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health.

Here at VivirLatino, we have written for years about sexuality, access, and our immigrant communities. I use the word “our” very deliberately. Perhaps it’s unfair to get caught up in the use of one word, but reading/writing “for” immigrant women when many of us are immigrant women or have mothers, hermanas/sisters, tias who are immigrant women. Defining immigrant womanhood from the outside complicates if not obstructs the real struggle for justice – whatever that means and all that means.

I am going to work on a post for tomorrow that looks a little further/deeper at this issue and the path we are caminando on/walking on – together.

I welcome and look forward to your thoughts.

VivirLatino Proudly Participating in first annual Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice

9 Aug 2010

We are proud and honored to participate in the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health‘s first annual Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice. Everyday this week, we will feature a post relating to Latinas and reproductive justice and invite you to discuss with us and with each other what reproductive justice looks like for nuestra comunidad.

All of our posts and the posts of others will be linked to the Latina Institute’s blog, Nuestra Vida, Nuestra Voice> (Our Life, Our Voice). We invite our readers to visit that site as well to further the conversation.

Follow up on John LaBruzzo’s Plans to Sterilize Poor Women

5:07 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · New Orleans · 6 Comments

29 Sep 2008

VL reported here last week about Louisiana State Representative John LaBruzzo’s efforts to create legislation that would pay poor women $1000 to have their tubes tide. At the time, a commenter noticed that many women of color and poor women may actually want the sterilization, to which I replied that it is frustrating that “help” for poor people always comes in the form of sterilization rather than challenges to economic structures (such as $1000 scholarships for school, more jobs, raising the minimum wage, etc).

Women’s Health & Justice Initiative and the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic (both located in Louisiana) put out talking points to address LaBruzzo’s plans. The address the issue of “consent” in a very important way:

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