Operationalizing reproductive justice in clinical care

Awarded 2022
Honoring community-based organizations as knowledge generators
Kwajelyn Jackson, MS
Feminist Women's Health Center
$240,000

FWHC seeks to use an intersectional reproductive justice approach rooted in Black Feminisims to transform clinical service provision and patient experience. We intend to expand our gender-affirming services, grow our wellness care, and better support pregnancy, birth, and parenting — in addition to providing compassionate abortion care. Our direct services must specifically center the experiences of women and girls, Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, low-income people, Spanish-speaking communities, immigrant and refugee communities, queer, trans, and gender non-conforming (expansive) people, and all the places where these communities overlap. And thus, we want to gain knowledge from our community about the needs, experiences, past harms, and opportunities that exist to inform our approach. Through this project FWHC will hold focus group(s) with Black Midwives, Doulas to develop a partnership plan and pathway for workforce development; and hold focus group(s) with queer and trans parents/birthing people of color about their fertility and pregnancy experiences to inform our patient-centered approach. We envision a world where all our decisions about our bodies, pregnancy, sexuality, family, and safety are honored, protected, and treated with dignity because reproductive justice is reflected and experienced in everything we do. To realize this vision, we need the agility, and the stability to meet community needs, and evolve and adapt to the way the world is changing around us, — so that we can withstand the political instability of abortion laws and more holistically serve our community. So that when abortion access is restored, we are even more well positioned to achieve reproductive justice.