Dear Rewire community members,

As many of you know, today I’m taking leave of my position as associate editor at our site.  I’m very excited to be assuming a new post as web editor at The Nation.  But I’m terribly sad to leave behind the incredible community of reproductive justice advocates and writers gathered around Rewire — a group so smart, so principled and yet so grounded.  Thankfully, I’m not taking leave of the site itself — I’ll be reading, commenting and, I hope, occasionally authoring articles; submitting reader diaries and sharing all the terrific content.  Nor, I hope, am I truly leaving the community behind — I couldn’t miss the rallies, conferences, phonebanks, online debates and all the friends I’ve made in the field — and I know this site will facilitate that ongoing connection.

As I’ve wrapped up my time here, I’ve been reflecting on my own journey as an advocate for reproductive justice.  When I started at Rewire, I was unquestionably pro-choice and progressive, but it didn’t take more than a week for me to realize that there was far more to all of this than I’d seen portrayed in the mainstream media — there was a fight on for women’s lives and dignity of which abortion was only one (if critical) facet.  I soon discovered that attacks on contraception, denial of truthful and just sexuality education, the need for sexual rights and LGBT equality, the rights of mothers to parent with dignity, the politics of HIV prevention, pregnant women’s rights, birthing politics, the status of women around the world, reproductive health care for incarcerated women, women’s right to be free from violence and coercion, economic justice and access to health care — they were all connected, all crucial pieces of our work and all necessary to keep mindful of if we wanted to make progress on any one aspect. 

Thanks to all of you, I have learned so much and in so doing gained an invaluable perspective on my own life and acquired methods of analysis I’ll use wherever I go next.

With my deepest gratitude for what you’ve given to the site, and to me,

Emily.