Finding My Passion: Why Environmental Justice?

Starting Down My Path

In the mainstream media today, reproductive rights and its primary abortion narrative dominates the conversation surrounding reproductive health. It generates the most controversy, it is the topic of heavy political debate, it is regulated through policy, and is a subject of litigation. Even if a person didn't pay attention to all that, it dominates a large portion of the narrative of the mainstream women's movement. Reproductive rights is everywhere.

What then, is reproductive justice? Many times, reproductive justice is incorrectly used as a synonym for reproductive rights. It came as a surprise to me when I first found out that reproductive justice is its own movement in and of itself. While it may have some similarities with reproductive rights, it has its own set of beliefs and its own framework. Where the reproductive rights movement approaches reproduction issues from the lens of individual rights and choice, the reproductive justice movement rejects the narrative of choice and approaches reproduction from a broader human rights and social justice framework. This broader approach takes into account a wider range of issues and systems of oppression including race, class, gender, age, ability, sexuality, and immigration status. According to Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, reproductive justice is "the complete physical, mental, spiritual, political, economic, and social well-being of women and girls, and will be achieved when women and girls have the economic, social and political power and resources to make healthy decisions about our bodies, sexuality and reproduction for ourselves, our families and our communities in all areas of our lives." In order to achieve this goal, the reproductive justice movement takes a three pronged approach within its intersectional framework by emphasizing the right to have a child, the right to not have a child, and the right to parent that child.

The first two prongs -- the right to have a child and the right to not have a child -- are pretty straight forward. However, the last prong -- the right to parent that child -- for me is more ambiguous and confusing. If you have a child, how can you not have a right to parent that child? At first look this concept seemed highly contradictory to me and compelled me to dig deeper to find out what that right actually entails. What affects a parents right to raise their child? The fact that I hadn't thought about the right to raise one's child or the obstacles one might face in doing so displays my privileges in that I haven't had to think of the answer to this question. That my place of privilege prevented me from even seeing this as a potential problem horrified me and fueled my determination to see around that privilege and truly understand this prong of reproductive justice. In my attempt to answer this question, I came upon environmental justice which is inextricable from this prong of reproductive justice.

Once I saw environmental justice, I couldn't unsee it. It popped up everywhere, maybe because I had just learned about it or maybe because I wasn't previously involved in spaces that addressed issues of environmental justice. This year in school and in my internship, however, it has come up so frequently it seems a wonder I didn't see it before. So, I have committed myself, through this blog, to explore environmental justice as it exists within reproductive justice's goal of addressing the right to raise one's child. I hope not only to further my understanding of this issue and dig past my privileged views, but also to discover what I can do in the realm of environmental justice in my everyday life to further the cause in my own way.

So what is environmental justice? I've talked quite a bit about it by situating it within the reproductive justice movement, but what actually is it? According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), environmental justice is "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies." To further clarify this definition, the EPA goes on to define "fair treatment" and "meaningful involvement." Fair treatment means no group of people should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, governmental and commercial operations or policies. Meaningful involvement means that people have an opportunity to participate in decisions about activities that may affect their environment and/or health. This means that the public’s contribution can influence the regulatory agency’s decision, community concerns will be considered in the decision making process, and that decision makers will seek out and facilitate the involvement of those potentially affected.

Upon reading this definition, I can't help but wonder what its implications are in and of itself as well as within the reproductive justice movement. The actual policy that governs federal and state execution of the goals of fair treatment and meaningful involvement I will explore in a subsequent blog post, but this definition is rich all on its own. The fair treatment of all communities regardless of race, color, national origin or income refers to the concept of environmental racism which states that low-income and minority communities bear a higher burden of environmental risk than does the general population. This could mean that they live closer to a chemical waste plant or other major sources of pollution that would effect their health in a negative way. It is here in environmental racism that we see a key tie between the reproductive justice and environmental justice movements. Exposure to toxins can create a variety of health problems including breast cancer, infertility, spontaneous abortion, and birth defects. Obviously, this is extremely problematic in and of itself regardless of the community it is effecting. However, it is made more problematic by the fact that it disproportionately effects low-income and minority communities due to environmental racism and the fact that they are more likely to live near locations that emit or produce these sorts of toxins. Effects of environmental racism are devastating on two pillars of reproductive justice: the right to have a child and the right to raise that child. Clearly, both are inhibited by these effects and environmental justice is a key factor in fully and comprehensively addressing the goals of reproductive justice.

The second part of the definition -- "the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies" -- makes clear that there must be a framework put in place by which the government incorporates environmental justice into its laws, regulations, and policies to prevent the manifestation of environmental racism. In my opinion, the key to this, however, is to ensure the enforcement of environmental policies, especially as environmental law does not have a good track record for enforcement due to the primacy of the market in the mainstream government ideology in the United States. Therefore, regulation must comprise compelling enforcement mechanisms and incentives to ensure the success of the environmental justice policy. This part of the definition environmental justice effects the success of environmental justice programs and policies and therefore can have beneficial or detrimental effects for certain populations.

Environmental justice and reproductive justice are clearly inextricably linked; however, they comprise two separate, but parallel, movements. My goal throughout this blog is to look at environmental justice through the lens of reproductive justice and explore their similarities and potential for interaction in the future of the two movements. Both focus their energy on issues of empowerment. In order to achieve their shared goal of empowerment, the movements would be most successful through collaboration with one another. The inclusion of environmental justice in the reproductive justice movement would offer a more comprehensive and intersectional understanding of reproductive justice issues and therefore lead to a more comprehensive approach toward solutions to these issues. Furthermore, the reproductive justice movement can offer the environmental justice movement key aid in its campaign strategies, research, and public image tools. Not only are these movements parallel, they are key to helping one another realize their goals of empowerment and to combating their respective social justice issues, which in reality, are inextricable from one another. Together, they can be the face of much needed comprehensive social change.

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Sources

A New Vision Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice. “A New Vision for Advancing Our Movement for Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Justice.” 2005, pp. 1-5.

“Learn About Environmental Justice.” Environmental Protection Agency , Environmental Protection Agency, 7 Nov. 2018.

Price, Kimala. “What is Reproductive Justice? How Women of Color Activists Are Redefining the Pro-Choice Paradigm.” Project Muse - Today’s Research. Tomorrow’s Inspiration. 1 February 2011, pp. 42-65.

Richardson, Chinué Turner. "Environmental Justice Campaigns Provide Fertile Grounds For Joint Efforts with Reproductive Rights Advocates." Guttmacher Policy Review, vol. 9, no. 1, Winter 2006.