In the two years since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturned federal precedents, about half of U.S. states have banned abortion or restricted the procedure beyond the standard set in 1973 by Roe v. Wade, leaving many people without full access to reproductive healthcare and freedoms. As abortion care becomes increasingly criminalized and open-access states see strains on their resources, the pre-existing inequities in reproductive healthcare grow wider and create additional obstacles for many disadvantaged communities. As a result, the need to secure reproductive rights and generate high quality research is more necessary than ever.

In the fall of 2023, the PSTC, in collaboration with Brown’s Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women and the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, launched the Reproductive Justice Collaborative. The goal of the Collaborative is to bring together Brown community members with an interest in research, practice, and advocacy related to reproductive justice. Over the course of the year, the Collaborative hosted monthly meetings where members learned about the work of others and reproductive justice activities on campus. The meetings were convened by two Faculty Associates of PSTC, Dr. Madina Agénor, Associate Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences and of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health, and Dr. Maria Steenland, a health economist and Assistant Professor of Population Studies, together with Dr. Sarah Gamble, Visiting Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the Pembroke Center. Other PSTC faculty participants included Dr. Benjamin Brown (Medicine), Dr. Abigail Harrison (Public Health), and Dr. Susan Short (Sociology).

Reproductive justice is inherently interdisciplinary and Collaborative faculty from the humanities, medicine, public health, and the social sciences formed three working groups (which individually focused on community engagement, policy and advocacy, and research) and hosted presentations over the spring semester. The groups created a spreadsheet to determine members’ existing connections with organizations in the community, drew on the expertise of group members to learn more about current reproductive justice policy priorities, and presented research-in-progress related to reproductive justice.

Dr. Gamble explained that while abortion care is an important goal in the reproductive justice field, the movement “arises from the activism of Black women working to be able to not only choose when and if to parent, but to be able to parent in healthy and safe communities” and requires participants to “not only be invested in the very important issue of access to reproductive health care, but in questioning and dismantling the very systems that got us here in the first place.” The research interests of Dr. Steenland grew from her own pregnancy experience and “helped [her] realize that the right to have children, and raise them in a safe environment, are critical reproductive rights.”

While currently composed of faculty, the Collaborative plans to provide opportunities for student engagement in the future. This summer, three Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards (UTRA) students are conducting interviews and gathering information on Brown’s active research presence, as well as on local individuals and organizations who are involved in reproductive justice, in order to create a resource that synthesizes opportunities for collaboration in the field. With this tool, people with various interests and backgrounds can continue to contribute to the reproductive justice movement in a meaningful way that maximizes impact.

For Dr. Gamble, the movement is naturally inclusive, particularly for the LGTBQ+ community. “Conversations in the reproductive health and rights spaces have often ignored the particular needs of LGBTQ people,” she explains. “We all have an investment in our bodily autonomy and the [reproductive justice] framework recognizes that.”

PSTC Director Susan Short explains, “the Collaborative in Reproductive Justice creates meaningful partnership between the PSTC, Pembroke, and the School of Public Health, connecting communities within and beyond Brown, and in so doing, deepens and extends the excellence and impact of PSTC research in this critical area.”