Reproductive Justice: The Politics of Health Care for Native American Women

by Barbara Gurr

The reproductive justice framework, which is both a theoretical paradigm and an activist model, brings together in cogent ways theories of human rights and inequality with intersectional examinations of women’s embodied experiences, and locates these in local social contexts. This grounding of international human rights law in locally driven conceptualizations of women’s health needs expands understandings and applications of the fundamental right to health. By situating women’s fundamental right to health in the broad social contexts of spiritual, environmental, and economic well-being, reproductive justice asserts the links between all of these areas and resists false isolation of the right to health from the conditions for health.

Loretta Ross confirmed this intention in her lecture at TWU on 10/12/16