Loretta J. Ross Keynote: ‘Reproductive Justice as a Human Right’
Wednesday, Oct. 24 | 7-8:30 p.m. | CMU Ballroom 200C
Join us for a keynote and book-signing by nationally-recognized women’s rights and human rights leader, Loretta J. Ross. This featured event wraps up the Women’s Center’s Reproductive Justice Week.
Ross is an expert on women’s issues, racism, and human rights. Her work emphasizes the intersectionality of social justice issues and how this transforms social change.
Ross’s keynote will address the ways that Reproductive Justice moves beyond choice and access to abortion. The term was coined by African American women, including Ross, in 1994, following the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt. It is a broad term that uses a human rights framework and also looks at reproductive oppression, sterilization abuse, immigration restrictions, gun culture, rape culture, the prison-to-school pipeline, etc. This presentation covers all aspects of Reproductive Justice, which is becoming the primary framework new voices in the movement are using to move beyond the paralyzing debates of abortion politics.
This event is free and open to all.
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SPEAKER BIO:
Ross is a co-founder of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, a network of women of color and allied organizations that organize women of color in the reproductive justice movement, and founder and Executive Director of the National Center for Human Rights Education (NCHRE).
Ross is the co-author (with Rickie Solinger) of “Reproductive Justice: An Introduction” (2016, University of California Press), a first-of-its-kind primer that provides a comprehensive yet succinct description of the field. Putting the lives and lived experience of women of color at the center of the book and using a human rights analysis, Reproductive Justice provides an essential guide to understanding and mobilizing around women’s rights in a period in which women’s reproductive lives are imperiled.
Ross is Program Research Director at the Center for Democratic Renewal/National Anti-Klan Network where she led projects researching hate groups and working against all forms of bigotry with universities, schools, and community groups.
She also serves as a consultant for Smith College, collecting oral histories of feminists of color for the Sophia Smith Collection. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and holds an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law degree awarded in 2003 from Arcadia University and a second honorary doctorate degree awarded from Smith College in 2013. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD in Women’s Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. She is a mother, grandmother and a great-grandmother.