Students for Reproductive Justice at UCSB

This week I spoke to Cassidy Miller, one of the publicity coordinators of UCSB’s Students for Reproductive Justice committee, to learn more about how students promote health care advocacy and reproductive rights on campus. 

Q. What does Students for Reproductive Justice do?

A. Students for Reproductive Justice is a subcommittee of the UCSB Associated Students’ human rights board. Our mission is to create advocacy efforts and educate students regarding issues related to reproductive justice.

What falls under the category of “reproductive justice”?

We distinguish between reproductive health, reproductive rights, and reproductive justice. Reproductive health is the direct services provided by a medical provider or relating to someone’s sexual or reproductive health. Reproductive rights focus on things that occur legally, such as keeping abortion legal, talking about sex education, and family planning – but reproductive justice is specifically advocacy relating to the basic human right to bodily autonomy. 

Since you have been on this committee for a couple years, would you say your understanding of reproductive justice has changed since you started?

I initially learned about reproductive justice in a feminist studies lecture. I got to write a paper on the maternal mortality rates and the discrepancies between black and white women, and I learned a lot about reproductive justice through that research. However, now that I’ve been a part of Students for Reproductive Justice, I find that I learn something new during every weekly meeting. The conversation surrounding reproductive justice is huge, especially in politics right now. We have made it a point at every weekly meeting to have someone do research on an article relating to new bills that have been proposed or some other reproductive justice-related topic to continue to build our team’s understanding of reproductive justice and stay informed. 

What would you say is the importance of having a committee that is so tuned into current events on campus?

I think especially as someone who is female-identifying, being informed about conversations happening by people in power has been crucial to how I live my day-to-day life. It is disheartening to know that a lot of people, including people on the board of Students for Reproductive Justice, come from backgrounds with little to no sex education, and they just have to learn on their own as they become an adult. I think it’s heartbreaking that people don’t know what their options are or even come from states where they don’t have options at all when it comes to abortion, for example. 

I think being able to have a group of people who maybe aren’t experts but they’re passionate and driven to fight for reproductive justice is important. I think every campus across the country, across the world, needs to have a mission relating to reproductive justice because it’s real. Family planning and having a child or not having a child is something that impacts every single person on earth, and it really impacts the half of the population that has a uterus and has the ability to become pregnant. I think it’s huge, especially on a college campus. It would be ignorant to say that people aren’t having sex because people have sex. It’s crucial to teach them how to do it safely and in a respectful manner. 

If you had to summarize based on current events, what either frustrates you or makes you the most pessimistic?

Connecting my own story here, I grew up in a religious background. When I was 12 years old, I was told to come to the front of the stage where worship music was playing and was asked to commit to abstinence until marriage. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know really anything about my body at that point in time, and yet I was a young person being influenced to do something I didn’t understand. When I look at the people in power right now, the privileged often cishet white men, I feel really, really sad for my younger self who was raised according to these ideals without being able to make my own decision. What it means to understand my period, understand sex, understand whether I want to have sex and at what age, whether or not I would consider an abortion… all these are things I had to learn on my own. Because of this, it is really disheartening to see the way our political system is set up and gives a voice to people who advocate for the sort of experience I had when growing up. I will say, on the opposite end of things, I am so inspired by the young people who are sticking up for themselves and their right to be educated on all these topics because they understand the importance of knowing your body and how it works. It is very inspiring to see that we as a generation aren’t letting these old, white men in power get away with this any longer.