Dr. Rhonda Williams is a public health advocate, reproductive justice researcher, and systems thinker. She believes full-spectrum care is not a privilege—it is a right, and the foundation for any just future.
My first real understanding of reproductive vulnerability didn’t come from textbooks or policy briefs. It came in a sterile exam room, through the cold language of a diagnosis: uterine polyps. I was young—not trying to conceive—but the bleeding was persistent, and the doctor’s face was far too serious for someone delivering “routine” news.
To speak of motherhood without speaking of systemic injustice is to lie by omission.
There was a procedure. There was silence. No one told me what it meant to carry fear inside your body long after the pain fades. No one explained what it does to your spirit when your questions are met with indifference. I left that office with more than a follow-up appointment—I left with the first spark of rage that would later become purpose.
That experience taught me what so many learn too late: that reproductive health is not just about outcomes. It’s about power. The power to ask. The power to choose. The power to be seen not as a vessel, but as a whole person. Motherhood, in its truest form, is an act of choice, dignity, and survival. But for far too many, it begins—and ends—in crisis.
Black women in the United States are nearly three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. Indigenous birthing practices continue to be ignored or actively suppressed. Since the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), over 21 states have enacted full or partial abortion bans, leaving millions without meaningful access to essential care.
Abortion, once protected nationally, is now a privilege of geography and wealth. LGBTQIA+ families navigate parenthood through policies that erase them, with 63% anticipating the need for adoption, foster care, or assisted reproductive technologies—systems rife with discrimination and gatekeeping.
The term "reproductive justice" was coined by a visionary group of Black women activists in 1994, led by SisterSong, to name the intersection of race, gender, class, and reproductive rights—something the mainstream pro-choice movement had long ignored.
And so this is why we say it clearly and unapologetically: Reproductive justice is motherhood justice.
It is the right to have a child. It is the right not to have a child. It is the right to parent the children we have in safe, sustainable communities.
And yet, we live in a world where:
Abortion rights are stripped.
Miscarriages are criminalized.
Mothers of color are surveilled.
Birth is forced—not chosen.
These are not broken systems. They are functioning exactly as designed. And forced motherhood? That is a form of violence.
Motherhood cannot be emancipatory unless autonomy is real. Unless the right to choose includes the conditions to thrive. Unless survival is not the ceiling—but the floor.
Reproductive justice demands more than access—it demands transformation:
Abortion rights that don’t depend on politics or proximity
Maternal health equity that extends beyond delivery
LGBTQIA+ family rights protected in law and honored in practice
Economic justice, because care work is labor and deserves support
Environmental justice, because every child deserves clean air and water
Reproductive justice is not just about health outcomes—it is about freedom from control. Systems that deny abortion rights, criminalize miscarriage, surveil mothers of color, and force birth without support are systems that weaponize motherhood against the very people they claim to protect.
Forced motherhood is a form of violence, and motherhood cannot be free unless choice is real—unless autonomy is honored and survival is not the ceiling, but the floor.
To speak of motherhood without speaking of systemic injustice is to lie by omission. To celebrate "choice" without acknowledging that choice is unequally distributed—by race, by class, by disability, by immigration status—is to uphold the very systems that endanger the futures we claim to value. True reproductive freedom must include the structural conditions that allow people not only to choose, but to thrive.
Mothering futures means building a world where care is abundant, where survival is not a question mark, and where the power to decide when, how, and whether to parent rests fully with the people whose lives are at stake. It means centering the people most pushed to the margins—and fighting like hell to bring them to the center. Because a society that controls bodies controls futures. Because a society that denies care denies life. Because true motherhood justice demands that we fight for every body, every story, every possible tomorrow. The future of mothering—and the future of justice—depend on it.
