For PRA #3, select medical or reproductive justice as your focus area. In your PRA, please answer the following questions:
1. What is medical or reproductive justice? (Define and use course materials and/or outside research to support your definition.)
2. Select an issue (or issues) related to medical or reproductive justice. How is the issue relevant to medical or reproductive justice and in what ways does injustice manifest in this area? (See below for possible issues.)
3. How do the perspectives of feminist of color help us better understand this issue and medical or reproductive justice more broadly? (Rather than answer this question directly, weave the perspectives, theories, or concepts into the topic(s) you discuss. For this question, you can draw on some of the theories we have covered—bodymind, crip of color critique, (dis)ability, compulsory systems, etc.—or you might use the course materials assigned for Weeks Seven and Eight (for instance, if you were discussing medical injustice, you could incorporate Betina Judd’s Patient.).
4. What are some possible ways to work toward medical or reproductive justice?
Possible Issues for Medical/Health Justice:
Access to Medical Care
Health Disparities
Medical Segregation
Medical Experiments
Healthcare Rationing
BIPOC Health Care Providers
Mental Health
Health Insurance
COVID-19
Medical Education
Medical Laws/State Violence
Access to Medical Care
The “Weathering” or Debilitation of Black Women’s Bodyminds
Sterilization/Eugenics
Black Mother Mortality
Black Infant Mortality
Black, Indigenous, and POC Motherhood/Parenthood
Possible Issues for Reproductive Justice:
Important Notes:
Be sure to have a central argument for your paper.
Example: I argue that one of the ways medical injustice manifests is through institutionalization, and old, disabled, and poor people of color in nursing homes have been disproportionately dying from COVID-19 as a result.
I also highly recommend having a preview. This lets the reader know how you are going to prove your argument and organizes your paper.
Example: First, I define medical justice. Then, I discuss how old, disabled, and poor people of color have been warehoused in for-profit nursing homes that have not properly protected them—leading to high rates of illness and death. I consider how Richie’s concept of the “prison nation” informs how we understand confinement as a solution to social problems and how that leads to medical injustice. Lastly, I advocate for abolition and an end to institutionalization.
