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Undivided Rights
Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice
Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross, and Elena Gutiérrez
Pages: 344ISBN: 0-89608-729-8
Format: paper
Release Date: 2004-10-15
This book is also available in cloth
2005 Gustavus Myers Book Award Winner
Read the release
“Reproductive rights” is just the right to a safe abortion. Right? No!
this book proclaims there's so much more. Vibrant and fierce, Undivided Rights
presents a fresh, textured understanding of the reproductive rights movement by
placing the experiences, priorities, and activism of women of color in the foreground.
This rare book captures the evolving and largely unreported history of women of
color organizing themselves in their struggle for reproductive justice. Projected
against the backdrop of the mainstream pro-choice movement and less-known radical
mobilization, these dynamic case studies testify how, starting within their communities,
these women—Latina, African American, Native American, and Asian American—have
spearheaded the fight for jurisdiction over their own bodies and reproductive
destinies.
Weaving together pieces from personal interviews, organizational files, and archived documents, the book features the groundbreaking work being undertaken by women of color who have defined and implemented expansive reproductive health agendas. Rejecting legalistic remedies and seeking instead to address the wider needs of their communities, they stress the urgent need for innovative strategies that push beyond the traditional base and goals of the mainstream pro-choice movement—strategies that are broadly inclusive while being specifically effective.
While raising tough questions about inclusion, identity politics, and the future of women's organizing, the authors offer a way out of the limiting focus on "choice," and articulate a holistic vision for reproductive freedom. With Undivided Rights, the authors echo the words of Lila Watson, an aboriginal activist:
“If you have come to help me, please go away. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, let us work together.”
A read both inspiring and informative, this volume will be prized by activists and academics alike, who will come to look upon it as a foundational work in the annals of women's history.
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Breaking News
December 8, 2005
Human Rights Book Awards
South End Press titles Conquest and Undivided Rights among the winners
Atlanta, GA: In observance of United Nations Human Rights Day world-wide, ten books and their authors received prestigious Myers Outstanding Book Awards 2005 at The Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History (AARL), a Special Library of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System, in Atlanta, GA. The Greater Atlanta human rights community joined AARL and the Gustavus Myers Center, a national organization, in honoring the awardees and co-sponsoring the lively dialogue.
"In the struggle for justice is the hope," said Loretta J. Williams, Myers Center director, in announcing the winners:
- Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross, Elena R. Gutierrez, Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice, South End Press 2004 The authors tell how progressive women of color have long been active countering oppressive conditions, and lucidly demonstrate the spiritual and organic nature of reproductive justice.
- Andrea Smith, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian ...
Jael Silliman
Click here to view Jael Silliman's full Author PageJael Silliman has been an activist both in the US and international women’s health and reproductive justice movements. She was a program officer at the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, an early supporter of organizations of women of color. She was an associate professor of women’s studies at the University of Iowa, where she wrote about social movements, women’s health, and reproductive rights. Currently an independent consultant, for six years she was the program officer for reproductive rights in the Human Rights Unit at the Ford Foundation. Her other books include Policing the National Body: Race, Gender, and Criminalization, co-edited with Anannya Bhattacharjee, and Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames: Women's Narratives from a Diaspora of Hope. She is from India and is an immigrant to the US.
Marlene Gerber Fried
Click here to view Marlene Gerber Fried's full Author PageMarlene Gerber Fried came to reproductive rights after her involvement in the civil rights, women’s liberation, and anti-war movements of the 1960s. Since the late 1970s, her focus has been domestic and international abortion and reproductive rights. She works with student activists in her role as director of the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program at Hampshire College, where she is also a professor of philosophy. Marlene is the founding president of the National Network of Abortion Funds, a co-founder and board member of the Abortion Access Project, and serves on the international board of the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights. She edited From Abortion to Reproductive Freedom: Transforming a Movement.
Loretta Ross
Click here to view Loretta Ross's full Author PageLoretta Ross has a 25-year history in the women’s movement, both in ending violence against women and promoting reproductive justice in the United States and internationally, and was active in the black nationalist and civil rights movements. A founding member of SisterSong, Loretta Ross became National Coordinator in 2005. In 2004, Loretta was National Co-Director of the April 25, 2004 March for Women's Lives in Washington, DC, the largest protest march in US history with more than one million participants. From 1996-2004, she was the Founder and Executive Director of the National Center for Human Rights Education (NCHRE) in Atlanta, Georgia. She is an expert on human rights, women's issues, diversity issues, hate groups and right-wing organizations. Ross is presently writing a book on reproductive rights entitled Black Abortion. In 2003, Ross received an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law degree from Arcadia University.
Ross was one of the first African American women to direct the first rape crisis center in the United States in the 1970s. From 1985 to 1989, she served as the Director of Women of Color Programs for the National Organization for Women, organizing the first national conference on Women of Color and Reproductive Rights in 1987. Prior to developing NCHRE in 1996, she served as the national program research director for the Atlanta-based Center for Democratic Renewal (CDR) (formerly the National Anti-Klan Network) from 1990 to 1995 and program director of the National Black Women's Health Project from 1989-1990. She is a political commentator for Pacifica News Service, and has appeared as a political commentator on Good Morning America, The Donahue Show, The Charlie Rose Show, CNN, and BET.
Loretta Ross's recent publications include:
Elena Gutiérrez
Click here to view Elena Gutiérrez's full Author PageElena Gutiérrez is an associate professor in gender and women's studies and Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Dr. Gutiérrez earned her PhD in sociology from the University of Michigan in 1999 and is a scholar of Latina/o reproductive and sexual health politics, feminism and social activism, and Chicana/o studies. She has recently received funding from the Migration and Health Research Program (PIMSA) for a collaborative, bi-national project to research the role of social networks in the reproductive health care that Mexican immigrant women in Chicago. She is also the principal investigator of the Sterilization Policy Project, which assess the current status of female sterilization informed consent protocols across the nation. Her book publications include Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice with Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried, and Loretta Ross (Boston: South End Press, October 2004), which received the 2005 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, and Fertile Matters: The Politics of Mexican Origin Women's Reproduction (University of Texas Press, 2008). Fertile Matters documents the involuntary sterilization of Mexican-origin women in Los Angeles in the 1970s and illuminates the ways in which political, social, and racial anxieties shaped the construction of the "problem" of Mexican origin women's fertility and reproduction. Dr. Gutiérrez has served on the boards of and worked as a consultant with the National Latina Health Organization, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, and Mujeres Latinas en Acción.