Editor's Note: This article is part of a pre-election series featuring leading voices in sexual and reproductive health advocacy, showing how shared American values underpin their support for sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. Read them all here.
The word "justice" appears only three times in the United States Constitution. The first time justice is mentioned, it is named in the preamble as one of the reasons the Constitution even exists: "to establish Justice." The Constitution guarantees a litany of rights that establish legal and social equity, and then extends those rights to those of us that were left out in the first round. Is this what makes justice an American value?
The seed for justice to be a guiding American value was planted in the Constitution, but as Americans we have valued justice far more in our actions that any printed word can for us. We have defied authority and risked our lives in the name of justice. We have dared disrupt the economic foundation and stability of the country to abolish slavery, we have rejected abuses of power and demanded protection for workers from labor exploitation, and we have disintegrated arguments of inferiority falsely grounded in nature and biology to obtain the right to vote as women and people of color. No law, including the Constitution, did any of this for us before we did it ourselves. Justice may be found in the documents that govern us, but it is Americans working as civic participants and activists that put it there. Americans value and demand justice even when the Supreme Court doesn't.
But I don't work for reproductive justice because justice always prevails, because no matter how hard we struggle, it certainly doesn't (especially the first or second or third time around). As an American, I know that we embrace justice because it demands that we build a society that dismantles and rejects oppression. Justice is not a value that explains how to accept the way things are, but that guides us in putting them as they should be.
As a member of an abortion fund and as an activist in the "Hyde - 30 Years is Enough!" Campaign, I demand that the federal government quit denying women essential medical care simply because they are poor. Medicaid is Americans' commitment to the poor and underserved, and the right to an abortion is one protected by the Constitution. By denying women abortion services under Medicaid, the Hyde Amendment undermines both of these pledges, and does so in ways that directly discriminate against women - above all young women, poor women and women of color. This blatant discrimination is antithetical to American values of justice and equity. We do not allow the government to deny us the right to vote because we are poor, nor are we denied the rights to freedom of religion or of assembly because we cannot afford them. So why is the right to an abortion, one explicitly protected by the Constitution, any different? The answer is because the need for abortion care under Medicaid affects only poor women, whose political voice is more likely to be marginalized and more likely to be ignored by politicians. Therein lies a deep injustice, and it is that laws and regulations meant to preserve the rights and health of Americans have left out certain women because a powerful few have alternative definitions of "rights" and "health" for those women.
We are still working to repeal the Hyde Amendment, but we have two centuries of American movements for social justice behind us, letting us know, unequivocally, that we are right. Laws don't repeal themselves. Our profound value of justice as Americans has led us to demand equal protection and equal rights time and time again, and we will continue to do so now.
