We're Never Going Back and Never Backing Down: Reproductive Justice is a Human Right

| By Joy Messinger |

The past few weeks have been enraging. We are appalled by the recent wave of abortion ban bills being passed in state legislatures throughout the South and Midwest that increase stigma, surveillance, and criminalization of a human right and a safe medical procedure. We are also devastated to learn about the murders of three Black trans women, Muhlaysia Booker, Claire Legato, and Michelle Simone.
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But none of this is new. These weeks follow decades of long-term coordinated attacks on abortion access, trans and queer liberation, comprehensive sexuality education, voting rights, public education, and migration. And for decades, Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color, transgender and queer communities, migrants and refugees, disabled people, and youth have been mobilizing their communities and sounding the alarm.

We followed their lead then, and we’re following their lead now.

Our gender justice framework is built on the rich legacy of our grantees and their work across identities, issues, and strategies. As an unapologetically feminist, trans, and queer fund, we know that any efforts to restrict access to safe, legal, and affordable abortion and other sexual and reproductive healthcare are tied to classism, racism, ageism, transphobia, and ableism.
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Before our Emergency Abortion Fund closed in 2011, we funded more than 2,000 pregnant people throughout the U.S. because we know that cisgender women, trans men, and non-binary people all seek and have abortions. We continue to center and invest in the leadership of trans, gender non-conforming, and intersex people of color, because when attacks are waged, they are the ones who experience the greatest impact and have the least access to philanthropy.

In the past few weeks, Third Wave’s rapid response fund has mobilized support to:
The Yellowhammer Fund, an Alabama-based young women of color-led abortion support network

TKO Society, an Alabama-based Black trans-led organization organizing their communities at the intersection of LGBTQ and reproductive justice
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The collaborating organizations of the Georgia Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice Coalition

We encourage you to learn about, signal boost, and donate to these groups, as well as any of the reproductive justice organizations in the most impacted states, listed below.

This is a grassroots collective fight. We need to leverage our power and dollars to make sure communities are resourced for both the urgent immediate needs, and the longer fight for justice.

With love and solidarity,
Joy Messinger
Program Officer, Third Wave Fund

abortion access and reproductive justice groups

Alabama: The Yellowhammer Fund* | POWER House
Georgia: Access Reproductive Care (ARC) Southeast* | Feminist Women’s Health Center* | SPARK Reproductive Justice Now*+
Kentucky: Kentucky Health Justice Network
Louisiana: The Reproductive Justice Action Collective (ReJAC)* | Women with a Vision*+
Mississippi: Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund
Missouri: ReproAction
Ohio: New Voices Cleveland*+

National Organizations with sustained presence and relationships in the South and Midwest: National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum* | National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health+ | National Network of Abortion Funds | SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective*+ | URGE: Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity*+

Local and Grassroots trans people of color-led organizations that center reproductive justice in their work: Sylvia Rivera Law Project (New York, NY)+ | TGI Justice Project (San Francisco, CA)* | TKO Society (Selma, AL)* | Trans Queer Pueblo (Phoenix, AZ)* | Trans Sistas of Color Project (Detroit, MI)* | Trans Women of Color Collective (Washington, DC)*
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* Third Wave Fund grantee or donation recipient (2015 - present)
+ Third Wave Foundation grantee (1997 - 2013)

Recommended readings

As Abortion Restrictions Sweep the South, Look to Southerners to Lead, Monica Edwards, Truthout, 5/17/19
The “Auntie Network” Already Exists, Kelly Hayes, Truthout, 5/19/19
Where to Donate and How to Help Keep Abortion Legal, Elly Belle, Teen Vogue, 5/19/19
Women Are Not the Only Ones to Get Abortions, s.e. smith, Rewire.News, 3/1/19
It’s Not Just Japan. Many U.S. States Require Transgender People to Get Sterilized, Samantha Allen, The Daily Beast, 3/22/19
From Words to Action: Showing Up for Black Trans Women (link has expired), Janetta Johnson and TGI Justice Project, 3/20/19

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