Reclaiming Reproductive Justice: The Combahee River Collective and A Call for a Black Feminist Homecoming
By Sol Elias
In the sixth installment of our Special Blog Issue, “50 Years of Combahee”, writer Sol Elias offers that restoring the transformative power of the Reproductive Justice Movement requires a return to the radical, Black Feminist politics articulated by the Combahee River Collective.
Contemporary movements against reproductive injustice in the United States have lost their radical vision, succumbing to the allure of neoliberal electoralism and expediting an already rapid descent into global Christofascism–a political ideology that combines Christian fundamentalism with authoritarianism, seeking a theocratic governance system to restrict civil liberties under the guise of religious values (Stroop, 2022). As these movements are further eroded by neoliberalism, they have lost sight of the radical critiques of power that were central to the original Reproductive Justice Framework (RJF). Instead, the Reproductive Justice movement (RJM) has become entangled with U.S. imperialism, as leaders and organizations weigh the risks of alienating electoral and philanthropic allies against opposing zionist violence in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria–failing to realize that such compromises threaten the RJM’s very survival.
Restoring the transformative power of the RJM requires a return to the radical, Black Feminist politics articulated by the Combahee River Collective (CRC). The CRC’s Identity Politics recognizes the most marginalized as “levelly human,” rejecting hierarchical structures of power and centers the expertise of the most oppressed in shaping revolutionary pathways forward. This vision contrasts starkly with the “elite capture” of Identity Politics (Táíwò, 2020), which detaches identity from radical critiques of power and compromises the radical potential of social justice movements. To regain its transformative power, the RJM must re-embrace these foundational Black Feminist principles, resisting neoliberal electoralism and rejecting complicity with U.S. hegemonic violence both at home and abroad.
This essay traces the origins of the RJF and the movement that followed, critiques its co-optation by neoliberal forces, and calls for a renewed anti-imperialist vision of Reproductive Justice. It begins by situating the RJF within the context of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and assessing how U.S. imperialism continues to undermine these goals. Then, it examines how the RJM’s prioritization of electoralism and complicity in imperialism—particularly the co-optation of storytelling—have transformed it from a radical force for collective liberation into a tool of the status quo. Finally, it argues for a return to radical, Black feminisms and the urgency of building a movement for bodily autonomy rooted in Identity Politics.
“Restoring the transformative power of the Reproductive Justice Movement requires a return to the radical, Black Feminist politics articulated by the Combahee River Collective (CRC). The CRC’s Identity Politics recognizes the most marginalized as “levelly human,” rejecting hierarchical structures of power and centers the expertise of the most oppressed in shaping revolutionary pathways forward.”
The 1994 ICPD and the Origins of the Reproductive Justice Framework
To understand how the Reproductive Justice Framework became entangled with neoliberal politics, it is crucial to trace its origins through the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), which set an international stage for the RJF’s evolution.
The ICPD, held in Cairo, marked a watershed moment in global discourse on sexual and reproductive health as a human right. Grounded in international human rights principles, the ICPD Programme of Action, adopted with U.S. participation, aimed to improve family well-being and global access to sexual and reproductive healthcare (United Nations Population Fund, 1994). While the ICPD reaffirmed the application of human rights principles to reproductive health, its goals—such as reducing infant and maternal mortality and expanding access to reproductive services—fell short of addressing the root causes of reproductive injustice. (United Nations Population Fund, 1994).
Alongside the ICPD, a more radical framework for reproductive rights emerged in the United States: the Reproductive Justice Framework (RJF). In 1994, a group of Black women, some of whom attended the ICPD and returned inspired by Third World, transnational, and decolonial feminist perspectives, convened in Chicago and co-founded the RJF (Ross and Solinger, 2017, 63). The core principles of the RJF are: “(1) the right not to have a child; (2) the right to have a child; and (3) the right to parent children in safe and healthy environments”, with an emphasis on "sexual autonomy and gender freedom" (Ross and Solinger, 2017, 9). These women argued that the U.S. policies restricting reproductive self-determination violated fundamental human rights, and that mainstream social movements had failed to address the realities of racialized and gender-marginalized communities.
The RJF quickly gained national prominence by challenging the pro-choice/pro-life paradigm and exposing how social, economic, and political conditions make reproduction a site of violence for racialized and gender-marginalized communities. Rejecting the focus on "individual choice," the RJF highlights the need to protect against coerced sex, reproduction, and forced sterilization–experiences disproportionately affecting racialized people (Ross and Solinger, 2017, 17). Our sexual and reproductive lives are shaped by patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism, and the RJF embodies the Combahee River Collective’s (CRC) belief that “the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity.” It represents a critical awakening: feminist and anti-racist politics of the time failed to confront the State’s regulation and policing of reproduction as a Black concern or acknowledge how anti-Blackness demarcates reproductive oppression in the United States. By critiquing both the liberal pro-choice movement and broader social justice movements, the RJF asserts that individual choice alone cannot secure reproductive dignity for racialized and gender marginalized people. Its intersectional approach to policy, litigation, and advocacy has made it a vital force in the struggle for reproductive justice, centered on family well-being and the dismantling of racial, gender, and economic oppressions.
The Failure of the ICPD Goals in the United States
Despite the United States’ participation in the 1994 ICPD and the growing influence of the RJF, the United States consistently sabotages efforts to achieve key reproductive health objectives both at home and abroad. While the ICPD set forth ambitious goals, such as universal access to reproductive healthcare, the U.S. leads its peers in perinatal and infant mortality, with marginalized communities—particularly Black mothers and children— disproportionately affected. This disregard for reproductive health exposes the disconnect between international rhetoric and domestic realities, where a profit-driven healthcare system obstructs access to equitable healthcare services. The U.S. not only disregards its citizens’ reproductive rights but also exports harmful ideologies that limit reproductive autonomy abroad, undermining vital healthcare infrastructures in the Global South and exacerbating reproductive health disparities worldwide.
The U.S. Perinatal and Infant Health Crises
The United States’ maternal mortality rate is 22.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, more than double or triple that of other high-income nations (Zephyrin, Laurie C., et al, 2024). Severe maternal morbidity also affects 50,000 to 60,000 pregnant people annually, with the numbers increasing (Zephyrin and Declercq, 2021). The maternal death rate for Black people in the United States is even higher at 49.5 deaths per 100,000 live births. (Zephyrin, Laurie C., et al, 2024). Moreover, although wealth generally correlates to infant survival, research shows that the richest Black mother is more likely to experience infant death than the poorest white mother (Kliff et al., 2023). The wealthiest Black mothers experience infant mortality at a rate of 437 per 100,000 live births, compared to 350 for the poorest white mothers (Kliff et al., 2023). When profit takes precedence in dominant approaches to pregnancy and childbirth in the United States, it is no surprise that millions of people, particularly Black pregnant people, are denied equitable, culturally relevant, and self-determined healthcare.
“...a focus on racial disparities in maternal and infant mortality can create a skewed impression of pregnancy as dangerous, leading to the belief that the desire for “normal physiologic” or natural birth is irresponsible or a luxury that black women in particular cannot afford…The idea that birth is an emergency requiring medical supervision and intervention has resulted in an expensive maternal health-care system that…fail[s] to provide accessible, culturally sensitive and equitable care for black women and other marginalized communities (Oparah, 2018, 12).”
Lack of Access to Quality Education in the U.S. in Abroad
Though U.S. women outpace men in college enrollment and graduation, educational disparities persist, particularly for women of color, poor women, and women living in rural areas. Racism, patriarchy, and capitalism continue to obstruct access and success at all education levels. Many marginalized people face barriers such as the high cost of college and concerns about employability, particularly amid growing attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Black girls, for example, are suspended or expelled from public schools at much higher rates than other girls, often leading to incarceration (Elakbawy, 2022). Consequently, Black women are less likely than white women to enroll in four-year colleges, graduate on time, or pursue advanced degrees. (American Association of University Women, 2020).
U.S. imperial hegemony is also a barrier to education access globally. Since October 2023, the U.S.-backed scholasticide in Gaza has destroyed over 80% of schools, hundreds of heritage and religious sites, and the Central Archives of Gaza (United Nations, 2024), leaving over 15,000 students and 2,400 teachers injured and nearly 10,000 students and 400 educational staff dead (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2024). Similarly, resource extraction in the Global South, such as Big Tech-driven cobalt and copper mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), diverts resources from education infrastructure and worsens educational outcomes. Children in the DRC are forced into hazardous mining conditions and exposed to deadly diseases, as poverty and hunger—worsened by the world’s worst global hunger crisis—push them to abandon school (Save the Children, 2024). Without access to education, children and gender-marginalized people are more vulnerable to early and child marriage, unwanted pregnancies, and high levels of gender-based violence. (United Nations, 2023).
U.S. Christofascism and Universal Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health
The U.S. descent into Christofascism has accelerated in recent years, marked by the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision conferring a constitutional right to abortion, and subsequent attacks on abortion access. Restrictions on abortion and contraceptive access disproportionately harm poor, rural and communities of color, compounding existing barriers such as cost, education and availability (Artiga, 2024). Post-Roe research shows that 60% of Black women ages 18-49 live in states with abortion bans, where legality joins a long list of geographic, financial, and transportation barriers that make in-clinic abortion care inaccessible (Artiga, 2024). These barriers also affect other women of color, queer and trans people, and working class communities, with some Black women navigating multiple forms of marginalization (Artiga, 2024). For example, Louisiana, a state with one of the largest Black populations in the U.S., rescheduled Misoprostol as a controlled substance, prompting hospitals to remove it from obstetric hemorrhage kits and increasing the risk of postpartum death for Louisianians. (O’Neil, 2024). Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry justified this decision by citing the belief that life begins at conception, calling it necessary to “ensur[e] the safety of women and the unborn,” a core tenet of Christofascist ideology driving abortion policies nationwide (Landry, 2024).
“The U.S. descent into Christofascism has accelerated in recent years, marked by the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision conferring a constitutional right to abortion, and subsequent attacks on abortion access.”
Christofascist ideology also drives the global obstruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare. Until its repeal in 2021, the Global Gag Rule barred foreign organizations receiving U.S. funding from providing information about abortion, disrupting access to contraceptives, maternal care, and other essential sexual healthcare. (Goldberg, 2022). The rule’s enforcement devastated national health infrastructures by shutting down clinics, cutting off medical supplies, and halting treatment for chronic illness, malaria, and HIV, directly increasing unsafe abortions and maternal mortality in countries like Uganda and Ethiopia (Goldberg, 2022). By tying foreign aid to anti-abortion stipulations, the U.S. exports Christofascist ideology, exerting control over reproductive autonomy in the Global South through the leveraging of stolen wealth.
Criticism of Contemporary Movements for Reproductive Rights in the U.S.
As the United States perpetuates global reproductive oppression, contemporary movements to end reproductive injustice have become entangled with neoliberal pro-choice politics, electoralism, and imperialism—prioritizing proximity to power over its foundational principles. SisterSong, a national multi-racial collective founded in 1997 and organizational foremother of the RJF and RJM, exemplifies this tension. The organization’s silence on the U.S.-backed genocide in Palestine–prompting the resignation of three board members earlier this year (Liu, 2024)–raises critical questions about the movement’s trajectory.
This failure to confront U.S. imperial violence echoes the failures of the ICPD, which promised gender equity and universal access to reproductive health but reinforced imperial hegemony and undermined self-determination. Similarly, SisterSong’s silence has also brought it closer to Planned Parenthood and Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America), often viewed as emblematic of the anti-Blackness, transphobia, and other exclusion plaguing the pro-choice movement. Planned Parenthood’s contracts with weapons manufacturer Raytheon (Froio, 2024) further expose the ties between these movements and to U.S. imperialism.
“This embrace of electoralism has also fueled identity reductionism, fundamentally altering how the movement uses storytelling. Once a powerful tool for narrative-shifting and memory-keeping by the communities marginalized in mainstream reproductive politics, storytelling is now co-opted to normalize white supremacy and avoid critique. Stories increasingly come from celebrities and political figures disconnected from the realities of the masses, reducing complex struggles to simplified identities that obscure systemic oppression.”
The RJM’s embrace of electoralism only reinforces these ties. In lockstep with figures like former Vice President Kamala Harris—the then highest-ranking Black woman in the Democratic Party—Planned Parenthood, SisterSong, and other prominent organizations normalize the U.S.-backed genocide in Palestine, claiming that this alignment is necessary to protect reproductive rights, even as Roe has fallen and conditions worsen daily. SisterSong co-founder Loretta Ross’ endorsement of prosecutors (Gonzalez-Ramirez, 2024), whose role is to carry out abortion criminalization under and post-Roe, signals a stark departure from the RJM’s original commitment to challenging state violence. By tying the movement’s survival to the Democratic Party’s electoral success, these organizations enforce a “gag rule” of their own—silencing criticism of the party and nonprofits as their accomplices, claiming any such critique endangers reproductive healthcare access further. Yet, this claim only holds through the legitimacy we, as the heart of this movement, grant them.
This embrace of electoralism has also fueled identity reductionism, fundamentally altering how the movement uses storytelling. Once a powerful tool for narrative-shifting and memory-keeping by the communities marginalized in mainstream reproductive politics, storytelling is now co-opted to normalize white supremacy and avoid critique. Stories increasingly come from celebrities and political figures disconnected from the realities of the masses, reducing complex struggles to simplified identities that obscure systemic oppression. For instance, reproductive rights advocates Minnesota Governor and 2024 VP candidate Tim Walz's IUI experience (Megerian and Ungar, 2024), obscuring his record of deploying the National Guard during the 2020 Uprisings (Sherman, 2024) and supporting arms sales to Israel (Farooq, 2024). These narratives prioritize political legitimacy and philanthropic support over social transformation, risking the movement’s credibility and reducing it to a tool for maintaining the status quo.
The Urgency of a Movement for Bodily Autonomy Rooted in Identity Politics
Given the RJM's drift toward electoralism and complicity, restoring its revolutionary potential requires a return to its radical, Black feminist roots and a direct confrontation of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. This means rejecting the allure of electoralism and the co-optation by political powers that dilute the movement's revolutionary aims. Storytelling must be reclaimed as a tool for radical truth-telling and collective liberation—not as a mechanism to further political agendas that betray the movement’s core principles. Above all, the RJM must recommit to centering the voices and experiences of the most marginalized—those who bear the brunt of reproductive oppression and remain at the forefront of the struggle for true reproductive justice— over any funding source or so-called “ally” in government. Without this reorientation, the RJM risks not only losing its legitimacy but also failing in its most basic objective: to build a world in which we are all free.
The Combahee River Collective’s (CRC) Identity Politics provides the roadmap for the reorientation of the RJM. As Barbara Smith, co-author of the CRC’s foundational statement and beloved elder, clarified: “We were not being reductive”(Taylor, 2020). Identity Politics, as the CRC intended, rejects identity reductionism, which reduces individuals to mere symbols for tokenism and political gain. Instead, Identity Politics empowers Black Feminists to transform the material conditions of our lives and eradicate oppression. Liberation, as the CRC emphasized, “necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy”—not superficial gestures of inclusion that sustain and reproduce racial and patriarchal violence (Taylor, 2020). Identity reductionism offers absolutely no means to eradicate the interconnected oppressions of racial capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy.
“It urges us to recognize that the survival of the Reproductive Justice Movement depends on rejecting pedestals, tokenism, and “queendom” in favor of something new. True liberation will only be possible if we center and act on this clarity, prioritizing collective well-being over proximity to power.”
To achieve Reproductive Justice, we must build a movement grounded in collective liberation, drawing clarity from centering the lived and learned expertise of the most marginalized among us. Specifically, this means centering those marginalized not only by mainstream reproductive politics but also within the so-called progressive reproductive politics of our movement’s leadership—people who are trans; who use criminalized or stigmatized substances; who are mad, mentally ill, neurodivergent, or disabled (MMINDD); and who are or have been incarcerated or otherwise subjected to carceral control. This is not an act of tokenistic inclusion but the only way to eradicate the systems perpetuating reproductive oppression. As the CRC noted, however, not all Black women have the same vested interest in challenging these hierarchies. The material conditions of many Black women, CRC wrote, “would hardly lead them to upset both economic and sexual arrangements. Many Black women have a good understanding of both sexism and racism, but because of the everyday constrictions of their lives, cannot risk struggling against them both.”
This reality calls not for the total dismissal of individuals or organizations criticized within the RJM but for transparency about the limitations of these individuals or organizations as vessels for social transformation. It urges us to recognize that the survival of the Reproductive Justice Movement depends on rejecting pedestals, tokenism, and “queendom” in favor of something new. True liberation will only be possible if we center and act on this clarity, prioritizing collective well-being over proximity to power.
About the author: Sol Elias is a Black, Queer and Trans Muslim writer, lawyer, and full-spectrum doula based in the Black South. They are also the co-steward of the Transfuturist Collective, an emerging network of queer and trans reproductive care workers committed to eradicating anti-Blackness and transphobia. Their writing, featured in Scalawag Magazine, Truthout, and others, is shaped by their legal expertise, community care work, and lived experience as a descendant of displaced, dispossessed, and enslaved peoples in occupied Boriken and New Afrika.
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41. Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. “Until Black Women Are Free, None of Us Will Be Free.” The New Yorker, 20 July 2020, www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/until-black-women-are-free-none-of-us-will-be-free.
42. Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. “Until Black Women Are Free, None of Us Will Be Free.” The New Yorker, 20 July 2020, www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/until-black-women-are-free-none-of-us-will-be-free. (Cited again.)