On April 17th, I attended the Annual Conference on the Advancement of Women sponsored by Texas Tech University’s Women’s Studies Department. At the event I had the pleasure of listening to guest speaker, Loretta Ross, about her life story and mission as a human rights leader.
Lorretta Ross was like no other speaker I have ever seen. She had natural charisma and charm that had everyone in the room hanging on to every word she said. From an early age, she was a bright woman who had fallen under the unfortunate circumstance of becoming pregnant due to incestuous rape. She admits that she never planned on being a feminist and activist, but, after being suspended from her high school in San Antonio and rejected from a college scholarship because of her pregnancy, she had to take a stand for herself and others.
One of the biggest take always from Lorretta Ross is her intersectionality among racism, women’s issues, and human rights. Ross, being an activist, started Reproductive Justice along with eleven other women in 1994. After a health care reform tried to exclude women’s reproductive health care, Ross and the other women banded together to protest. When coming up with the name for their group, they needed something that described their group despite their difference in views; some of the women were pro-choice and others pro-life. These women coined the term Reproductive Justice to classify their group within a broader human rights framework.
Ross also spoke of the feminist movement as being “white-washed” and how it offends her because it belittles her African history and contributions. The women who created Reproductive Justice all come from African descent who focus on getting women to participate in the spread of knowledge and protest of subjects such as sterilization abuse, rape culture, and reproductive oppression. Most of the women in Reproductive Justice have experienced many of these issues. Ross stated women of color struggled more so with sterilization because it was forced upon them. She indicted that her doctor inserted the Dalkon Shield IUD prior to her knowledge of what it would do. This later caused her and 700,000 women around the world to be sterilized. Ross’s main message was that we should be fighting for women’s rights regardless of race and how women of different ethnicities need to be represented in the fight. In 2004, Ross agreed to be the Co-Director of a pro-choice march in Washington D.C on the condition that it would reflect the principles of Reproductive Justice. 1.1 million women came to the March for Women’s Lives. Women from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds where there to represent and show their support. This further shows how intersectionality is such an integral aspect of the women’s rights movement.
Overall, Loretta Ross gave a moving speech along with being very informative. I left the speech with a different perspective on the on women’s issues and more knowledge on basic human rights.