A 360° Look at Reproductive Justice

2024 marked the 30th anniversary of a host of significant moments for sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. Dázon Dixon Diallo, Founder and President of SisterLove, Inc. and SisterLove International South Africa, sits down to talk with us about this momentous occasion, the timeline of reproductive justice, and a hopeful look into the future.

In 1994, an array of geopolitical events set the context for women’s leadership and representation. 1994 was also the year that a group of Black women in Chicago defined the concept of reproductive justice, the year that the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was passed, and the year that the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) was held in Cairo, Egypt, where 180 countries agreed upon the definition of sexual and reproductive health and rights. We can achieve similar progress 30 years from now, as long as the real implications of lack of abortion access and holistic access to sexual and reproductive health care and information continue to be understood.

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SisterLove International South Africa
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Transcript

Jennie: Welcome to rePROs Fight Back, a podcast on all things related to sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. [music intro]

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Jennie: Hi rePROs. How's everybody doing? I'm your host Jennie Wetter, and my pronouns are she/her. So y'all, I am recording this the Friday before the inauguration. So, I am living my, you know, last couple days of the Biden administration preparing for all that is to come with the new Trump administration. So, I am still in a much happier place than I may be on Tuesday when y'all are hearing this, when we've started to hear some of the executive orders coming out that are going to be really anti-rights. So I'm in a better place and thinking about how I am...it's gonna be really cold here this weekend we're gonna get some snow again. The March for Life is next week, on next Friday. So, just thinking through all of the ways I am going to stay cozy in my condo and not go out and deal with the world. So, I have a feeling there's going to be lots of comfort food eaten this weekend. I stocked up on groceries, got some fun books, and just having a quiet weekend, staying away from all of the things. And you know, like I said, I've been really trying to stay off social media, so I'm gonna do my best to continue to do that. Yeah, so, and we're still, I'm still working on meditating. I don't, like, I think I've said this before, I maybe haven't said it, didn't say it this year. I don't really do New Year's resolutions. And if I do, it's like something fun, like I've done, like, I will make more, bake more pastries 'cause that was something that I didn’t do a lot of baking of pastry. So, like, challenge things. Or I did one year that I am going to drink more bubbly. So I don't, so, like, that is how I do New Year's resolutions. But one of the things that I have been working on is doing more meditation. So, it goes and fits and starts and, you know, I'll do it for a little while and then, and then stop. But I have noticed that Luna, one of my cats really gets, I don't know if it's like the energy I'm putting out or what, whenever I am meditating, Luna is like, needs to be in my face and wants attention and wants me to pet her, which doesn't necessarily go for keeping yourself focused on meditation. But it's pretty funny that she does it every time 'cause clearly I'm just sitting there doing nothing, so I should be paying attention to her. So, we are trying to work around that as I am trying to be better about meditating. That is one of my things I'm working on for self-care for this upcoming administration is just trying to keep my peace. So, hopefully we'll see if it works. I don't know that I have a lot to say. I think the one thing, and I know this may be surprising, so this last week, Bob Uecker died and he called the Milwaukee Brewers games for, I mean, my whole life. And, and was just like, just such a part of my childhood. Like he was just all over Wisconsin and all these ads and like on TV and just was like an, an ever presence growing up, even as somebody who grew up more of a Cubs fan than a Brewers fan. Like, he was just like part of the fabric of my childhood. He was just always in the air. So, I didn't expect it, but that one really hit me. Like it was just, I don't know, it really, it really hit me about like this piece of my childhood that is no longer around. So, that was very sad and gonna miss Mr. Baseball. Let's see. I think that's all I wanna talk about today. I, y'all, I am so excited for this week's episode. You know, I have been so blessed and lucky to have so many wonderful guests on this podcast, and I'm always excited to have great conversations with them. But let me tell you, I was so excited to talk to this week's guest and to have her on the podcast. She is just such a thought leader in this area and somebody that I always love listening to speak. So, I was so excited to have her on the podcast. So, last year was an important year. It was marked the 30th anniversary of the reproductive Justice movement and 30 years for the International Convention on Population Development, where we first got reproductive rights as human rights. It was so wonderful to talk to Dázon Dixon Diallo at SisterLove about that moment and looking for: what do we want to see 30 years from now? It felt like a really hopeful conversation, even though we talk about, you know, some, all of the problems that we're seeing, it felt hopeful and it felt like the right conversation to hold for today. So, I am very. Excited to have Dázon on the podcast. And with that, let's go to my interview with Dázon.

Jennie: Hi Dázon. Thank you so much for being here today.

Dázon: Hi, I'm excited to be here with you. Thank you.

Jennie: I'm so excited. Before we get started, would you like to take a second and introduce yourself and include your pronouns? Well,

Dázon: Of course. I am Dázon Dixon Diallo, founder and president of SisterLove based in Atlanta, Georgia, and the founder and president of SisterLove International South Africa, based in Johannesburg. And my preferred pronouns are she and we, I'm a collective kind of person.

Jennie: Wonderful. I have been so excited to have you on the podcast, talk about a bunch of things, but you did a wonderful presentation for a coalition I'm in, and I was like, oh, this is like the first one we need to talk about. This episode is gonna come out in January, so we'll say, last year was the 30th anniversary of a couple big moments that we're gonna talk about. But one of the things I loved about your presentation is you started grounding it [in], like, what was going on in 1994. Like, I think some of our listeners may not have been born yet. I was just starting high school. Like, it may be hard for people to think about what things were going [on], what was life like.

Dázon: Wow. Yeah. And I spend a lot of time thinking about this because like you're pointing out, for a lot of different reasons, I think that 1994 is an extremely significant year, not only in general, like in the global context of geopolitics, but I think 1994 was an extremely significant year for women and even more particularly for Black women in the US as well as in the like I said in the global context. And what I mean by that is if we just situate a few things that happened in 1994 and try and bridge them together. Now, aside from the fact that a lot of other things happened in 1994, that might have distracted us a little bit, right? Some of those things, for example, were, I think that was the year that OJ Simpson was arrested. I think that was the year that Tupac Shakur was murdered. And it's odd enough that 30 years later, that conversation is coming back up because of the context of some other legal matters that are going on with regard to some you know, rapper stuff that's happening out there in the world. But even, I think more importantly in terms of 1994 and women, it was the year that there simultaneously was the first democratic elections in South Africa from which Nelson Mandela became the first democratically elected president. It was also the same year and time of those elections, as a matter of fact, that the genocide against the Tutsis happened in Rwanda, significant for women, because as a result of that atrocity, there's a large population of women that were left without the, the, because the men were killed more than the women. And as a result, since then, Rwanda has sustained one of the highest representations of women in governments in leadership, in business and in education across the board. It was also the year that the CDC first included women in the AIDS guidelines, or what we call the AIDS definition for clinicians to document or to diagnose AIDS in patients. It was the year that the International Conference on population and development was held in Cairo, the program of action, or the platform of action was adopted, which was the first time that over 180 countries around the world came together on an agreement of what are sexual and reproductive health and rights. And of course, it was also the year that the Violence Against Women Act was signed into law. And it was the year that 12 Black women sitting in a hotel room in Chicago came up with the concept, the coin title of reproductive justice and henceforth the movement that we're talking about today. '94 Is super significant.

Jennie: Yeah.

Dázon: And I think looking at 2024, we can tie those significances to things that are happening or have happened in this year alone. And so, it stands out for me.

Jennie: You know, I, like I said, I already heard you do the, this presentation, that part of this presentation. And so I already technically knew all this, but it still blows my mind to think that all of that stuff happened in 1994. Like, that is a momentous year.

Dázon: Yeah. And all of that stuff happened in the significance of—whether we knew it then in '94 or not—in the trajectory of women's roles, women's leadership, women's autonomy, women's power. And so, I really appreciate the fact that we can tie all of those things and then let's, you know, we can talk about what happened in 2024 and the significance of that, the significance of a living in a post Roe v. Wade world, a year of acknowledging how difficult it was to- because this was also a year that we had to renew the Violence Against Women Act and how what a challenge it was when it shouldn't be. That we are in a year where for the first time, the African National Congress, which was the governing party that won the Democratic elections in South Africa in 1994, that this is the first year that they had a general election in which they were not achieving 50% of the electorate. And a large part of that, I would say, is because they have failed to deliver on so many promises of the beautiful progressive constitution that South Africa has, including holding the protections of women and girls and LGBTQ people, and in South Africa right now, it is one of the most dangerous places on earth for these folks to exist. Here we are also in 2024, we, we for, I would say the, the trajectory of reproductive justice and the fact that it took so long for the reproductive rights community and the community at large to engage and adopt this framework as a way to address sexual and reproductive health challenges and the intersections with those challenges. I would say that this is why we're in a post Roe world. I would say this is why we're still in an uphill battle to get women elected into the top office of the land, especially a Black or a Brown woman. So, there are lots of things that I like to connect 1994 to 2024 to give us a chance to not repeat this cycle for the next 30 years.

Jennie: Yeah. I mean, 'cause one of the things I really think about is, you know, ICPD was like such a pivotal moment for, for reproductive rights and thinking of, there's been so much progress since then in so many ways. But there has also been this takeover of kind of authoritarian regimes with, like, anti-rights agendas. And, like, if ICPD were held now, I don't know if we would get as progressive as a document as we got then, even as we're still trying to push it to make it better because it doesn't have all the things we would like to see in it. So, it's really kind of that tension of these moments.

Dázon: I think you're absolutely right. And that's kind of what I mean by let's learn the lessons from these last 30 years, because I think you're spot on if there, and actually this is- ICPD celebrated 30 years, and I think even in the recognition of those challenges, they actually handled this year's acknowledgement of the platform of action very differently. There has not been one big global meeting where all the governments came together, even inside the United Nations General Assembly. There have been a lot of regional conversations. There has been a concerted effort, for example, in the 25th year of ICPD to get a lot of global agreements and commitments, country by country, by country, not at the general assembly level. And so, I think that even the UNFPA—which is the UN agency that's responsible for ICPD, for the platform of action, as well as for the strategic development goals—aligning the SDGs with the ICPD platform of action. I think being strategic in working country by country has actually been a really smart move for UNFPA to sustain the aspirations and the visions that were put together by the United Nations and subsequent governments in 1994. As a matter of fact, I think that a part of achieving the strategic development goals have been immediately tied to the success of sustaining the platform of action from 1994 and to go back in and possibly dismantle that would put the charge for the SDGs at greater risk than where we already are.

Jennie: Yeah. And that makes me think like, so the SDGs that's through 2030, that process is gonna be starting. So again-

Dázon: Mm-hmm.

Jennie: -that like nervousness of what we're going to see coming out of it as like those global negotiations get going of, like-

Dázon: Right.

Jennie: I just don't know that we can get something as progressive again. And it just breaks my heart to think of all of the people who are not gonna get access to the services they need.

Dázon: Yeah.

Jennie: I'm already starting to think through all of that. Like, I even mentioned earlier, I work a lot on the global side for work, so just thinking through, like, what's gonna happen in January and all of the people who may lose access to a full range of services.

Dázon: That's right. And the other reality though is even where services exist and they're supposed to be unfettered and they're supposed to be open and accessible by anyone, because of the gender inequities, because we still stigmatize sexual health, we still stigmatize reproductive health that's not about birth and delivery in a lot of ways, or labor and delivery, that there are still huge challenges that were set forth in the platform of action that we're still battling with. I give the example that there are places like in South Africa, which would be a great example to look at, where abortion, for example, is not only legal and accessible through the health department, through public health, it is free, and still young people are having really insurmountable challenges to accessing these services because of attitudes, because of the behaviors of providers, because of the aunties who work in the clinics and who cast dispersions on out of sex marriage or on adolescent and teen pregnancy without even putting the context around it in terms of the gender inequities in sexual relationships and the age differences between older men and younger women, and all of these different intersections, including gender-based and sexual violence, all of these different intersections that happen within a reproductive justice framework. We could look at all of these things and address them in a different way than setting aside abortion as a siloed issue and then acting accordingly based on individual beliefs versus looking at a larger framework that supports bodily autonomy regardless of the person's age or circumstance. So, I'm in alignment with you. I'm concerned about achieving the SDGs by 2030. We all know that some of these dates are set because we have to have a, we have to have an end point. We have to have a timeline and a deadline engaged or otherwise we don't get momentum. But I think we have to be realistic of what we can achieve in the next five years and what we need to look at beyond. And I would say, and I, my hat is off to Dr. Natalia Kanem, the executive director, and the amazing global community of UNFPA workers on the ground and in New York and in Geneva, who can see this for the long run, right? And who can see that this country by country, or the way we're looking at it, even in the United States, the state by state approach to assuring that people's rights and access to the healthcare and services that they need are assured if nowhere else within the country context or in our situation within the state and local context, there are a lot of parallels to what we're experiencing in the US to what we are seeing and can anticipate is happening in the rest of the world.

Jennie: Yeah. It's one of those words that feels like it's so simple of talking about the ability to access care, but there is so much hidden in that word of what access means.

Dázon: Yeah.

Jennie: So, like, when you were talking about people like stigma, keeping people away from clinics and stuff, like it takes one bad experience where somebody has a healthcare worker who doesn't respect them because they're young or whatever, to keep them away from the system in general.

Dázon: Or to violate their confidentiality.

Jennie: Yeah.

Dázon: And all of the data and all of the studies tell us that when we create spaces that respect the lived experience and respect what I call the indigenous expertise or the knowledge that comes with, this is my body, this is my lived experience, this is my story. When we open up and respect those contexts in which a person has to make these decisions, whether it's around contraceptive access, whether it's around abortion access, whether it's around making decisions about when, where, and how I deliver a baby that I wanna have, that all of this is not supposed to be solely in the hands of a provider or a decider, right? Because typically politicians become the deciders in our lives often, that it truly is up to the—what reproductive justice says—it's up to the bodily autonomy of the person. It's up to their decision of when to have a child, when not to have a child, and when to have the child that they choose. I mean, and how to raise the children that they choose to have in safe and development-friendly environments. And so, I think bottom line is that, and I, and I say this about '94 and I say that now, if we don't fully incorporate, not just adopt, not just acknowledge, not just give lip service to, but when we fully embrace and incorporate the larger intersectional framework of reproductive justice, I think we see our movement move faster and in the direction that we truly wanna go. Because what reproductive justice does allow is it allows for seats at the table for people who may not ideologically agree with you on every single aspect of the reproductive health spectrum. But if we can all agree, for example, on women's autonomy, on women's ability to make their decisions, that if we can all agree that every child born is a wanted child born, and that we create the environments and the opportunities for people to make those decisions based on that, that we have a different conversation and then we have a different movement.

Jennie: Yeah. Again, that big year of 1994, like, that was- reproductive justice movement came out of that year. And, like, that was such a huge momentous change to change the conversation again, and how we talk about these things. And it took a little while for everybody to pick it up more, but I'm so glad to see it getting incorporated more and more. I'm excited to see it showing up in global conversations in a way that it hasn't shown up. So, I just find that so exciting to see how much it has grown over that 30 years.

Dázon: Yeah. And the other power though, and, and it's, you know, 'cause it's always harder to prove the negative, right? Yeah. It's hard to prove that if this had happened then certain, certain things wouldn't have. However, the one thing that with my own experience with being in Cairo, we went in, 'cause at that time we were very much focused on bringing the intersections of HIV and sexual and reproductive health into the same frame, right? RJ had just been coined. The idea was to bring RJ to the ICPD to change that conversation, to bring that discourse to another level that was more inclusive and more diverse.

Jennie: Oh, see, I had that timeline flipped in my head. I had that ICPD came first and that RJ was a reaction. Oh, glad to hear that.

Dázon: No, as a matter of fact, and I'm so glad you raised this. So the context of what reproductive justice came from right, was really about healthcare reform.

Jennie: Yeah. 'Cause that was big in that year too.

Dázon: It was at a conference that was brought together specifically to look at how we were going to ensure, because right at that point, under the leadership of First Lady then, former First Lady Hillary Clinton, former President Bill Clinton crafting and trying to put this policy together and appease the anti-abortion lobby to appease the other side of the aisle, there was literally conversation about not including reproductive healthcare in the overall plan.

Jennie: Ugh.

Dázon: And so, that's where, that's why there was a conference. But then this conference comes together in the context of the whole conversation is really about abortion access. And the Black women who were attending that conference, all 12 of them who were attending this conference, had a different take and were frustrated by the fact that certain issues that were impacting the lives of Black and Brown and poor women across this country were not being brought into that conversation. Rand that's where they came up with this idea that some of these issues aren't just reproductive rights. Some of these issues are about social justice, it's about equality and equity. It's about making sure that all people's reproductive options were protected under the law and were provided within any kind of healthcare policy. That meeting took place in June or July of 1994.

Jennie: Oh yeah.

Dázon: So, when that happened, the first move that they made, one was to introduce the terminology. And so, they took out a huge ad. I just saw a big photo, 'cause I don't even know where that newspaper is anymore. But there was an ad in the Washington Post in August of that year, which was a month before ICPD. People were organizing all over the world. I organized the delegation to go to ICPD Cairo, my name is on one of the, is one of those signatories on that ad that we posted in the Washington Post, because the idea was to take reproductive justice to the ICPD to have some impact. And what we went in with was wanting to make sure that the issue of AIDS, because we're in the nineties, right? So, we're still talking AIDS, less of HIV at [this] point, but the issue of HIV and AIDS made it into that platform of action, because that was a serious matter for women who were diagnosed with AIDS at the time.

Jennie: And those really got separated.

Dázon: It never made it to the platform. Yeah. With all of the lobbying, all of the workshops, all the work that we did, it did not make it into the platform because of all of the other issues around AIDS. There was this bifurcation between HIV and reproductive health and rights going on.

Jennie: Yeah.

Dázon: I suffice it to say, back to the proving the negative. I would argue that had HIV and AIDS been incorporated into the overall platform of action, we would not be looking at a lag in the response to HIV and AIDS and women around the world. And I say that not including, it set us back 25 years because how can we be in 30 years later looking at an epidemic that is predominantly women, predominantly Black women and Brown women, and still not getting the level of attention, the access, the resources, the research, all the things that men, particularly men who have sex with men not taking anything away from the horrors and, and the challenges that have addressed that have faced their communities in the HIV space for over 40 years. Not taking that away at all, but if you looked at an epidemiologically, the true balance in the efforts would be in women, and it would be with a sexual and reproductive health lens if the original platform of action in '94 had stated it and had put the parameters around it and given the guidance that we gave to everything else, that was included in the platform of action. And so, I will bring it back around to the current UNFPA and lift up the fact that, at least for the last- since their 10th anniversary, little is known about the fact that the 10th anniversary of ICPD was held in London. It was a huge meeting. And it was at that meeting that they had invited at least one person, it was Promise Mthembu, to give a keynote talk. This is a woman of South Africa living with HIV to talk about what it meant to her to not have had her health concerns included as a mother, as a young person at that time, who was facing all kinds of issues with her diagnoses as well as her reproductive health. And they formally issued an apology to all people living with HIV, especially to women who were living with HIV and to women and girls who were at risk for HIV for that gross oversight. And ever since then, they have actively been engaged in ensuring that sexual health, that sexual transmitted infections, including HIV, have been a core element to the overall sexual reproductive health and rights platform. I think that that is a signature of what engagement of people, of the lived experience means, what that can generate. But it also, it also shows the true, I think, the eloquence and the inclusive intention of the United Nations to make sure that when we're talking about the SDGs nowadays, we're working hard to not exclude any condition that intersects with people's health and wellbeing.

Jennie: Okay. So we've talked about 2024 being another one of those moments. So, I mean, 30 years feels forever from now, but like, where do we see RJ and access to sexual and reproductive health being in 30 years?

Dázon: I wanna say we win. I really wanna say we win.

Jennie: I know I had somebody ask like, do you think we're ever gonna win? And I'm like, I couldn't do this work if I did not believe that.

Dázon: Yeah. No, we're gonna, we're gonna win. Because the arc of justice is always, we're always on the right side of time. It just takes time.

Jennie: Yep.

Dázon: But progress is progress and evolution is what it is. There's a tiny, tiny little example that I think about in terms of that. And it is, it might be micro, but I think it's actually major if we capture it, if we capture it right. In 2024, in the post- I just learned recently that the director, the state director of health for Mississippi, is actually a good guy. He's actually a nice person who actually believes in reproductive health and rights. Dobbs, Dr. Dobbs is not the enemy, so it's kind of hard. It is just that he was the head of the health department in the state. And so, the state got sued. And so his name is on the court case.

Jennie: Yeah.

Dázon: So, I have a hard time saying post-Dobbs, but since the dismantling of ROE by the Supreme Court in 2024, for the, I think probably the first time since the early seventies, we have had documented verifiable cases of maternal deaths as a result of abortion bans. So, now we have passed laws that are actually killing people. What I heard and saw change, which I think is probably the future, is for the first time we have had a context in which we can talk about abortion in maternal health. Maternal health has always, almost always been centered only around pregnancy, labor, and delivery, right? And birth outcomes. But maternal health is going to be the full spectrum of pregnancy. And when we can talk about the full spectrum of pregnancy and everything that happens from ectopics to miscarriages to elective abortions to labor and delivery and choices of how to have those deliveries and everything in between, then again, similar to what reproductive justice already does, is it brings a different intersectional analysis to what we are hoping for, for the best outcomes of people who could become pregnant. That changes a lot of things. And if we really embrace that before the other side does, 'cause what the other side will do is then say, see, we told you those medication abortions, all of that, they, it is killing people. No. It is the restrictions that are killing people. And the narrative has to be such that reproductive health and maternal health go hand in hand. And that abortion is a part of maternal health and wellbeing, then we can have a different conversation. I do believe that if the RJ community grasps onto that and finds ways to make sure that it's in the policy, that it's in the community education and mobilization work, that it's in voter education, that it's involved in all in and working in faith communities, that when it's involved in a different way, then we're gonna have a different outcome and we're gonna start to see different policies. The other thing is, is this another way to hold people accountable? Oh, so you don't care about pregnant people, right? That sounds different than, oh, you're anti-abortion. We forgive you for that. Right. So that's just one little kernel of hope that I have, is that we are able to change the narrative, right?

Jennie: And I kind of think it's working right? Like you saw the polling has been like so frozen for so long, but when people started to see the actual what, what getting rid of abortion access actually means.

Dázon: Yep.

Jennie: You saw the numbers actually move as people understood the real implications.

Dázon: And this maternal focus will sustain that. Right. It, because I think it's still pretty precarious, right? These are the same people who voted for the person who was about to become the president, only to have buyer's remorse before they're even inaugurated. So yes, I think that there's huge opportunity in this shift, but that we're gonna have to keep that conversation in that space, keeping it open to understanding bodily autonomy and women's autonomy. Because that's really, it wasn't even about abortion anymore. It was really about women's ability to make our own decisions. And I think that it's offensive to anybody for someone else to say, well, no, you can't, you can make all these other decisions, but you can't make this one that I think is, you're absolutely right on that. And I'm looking forward to see how it's not just bringing us through the next election cycle and the next election cycle, but how it's bringing us through changing societal attitudes. And it's changing the culture of our community to understand that healthcare is healthcare and that maternal and reproductive health are a part of that, full stop.

Jennie: And that conversation won't bring us back to Roe. Right? Because we know so many people were already prevented from accessing care, then this will bring us to a better place where people who were unable to access care because they couldn't afford it because there wasn't a clinic near them. Right. Because they couldn't jump through all of the hoops we can get to a better place. Yeah. That is meeting the needs of people.

Dázon: Well, you know what's funny is, again, trust Black women because since the true fight, for example, to end the Hyde Amendment, which is, you know, it was the annual amendment attached to the budget every year that denied the use of public monies to pay for anyone's abortion. That was always the rallying cry. Roe was never enough. Roe was not enough to protect poor women who didn't have access to abortions other than to go into extreme dire situations in order to afford it. The role was never enough for women who were shackled at the time that they were delivering. If they were institutionalized, whether incarcerated or whether in a health, a mental health institution or substance treatment facility, or anywhere else like that where they were under the oversight of the judiciary. That Roe was never enough when it came to having access to all of the available options for contraception. You know, deciding from a provider's bias of what kinds of contraception you wanna offer different people based on your perceptions of who they are and how they live. That wasn't protected under Roe even if it should have been.

Jennie: Yeah, I don't remember getting offered options. Like they were like, here, here's a pill. There wasn't a conversation of like, there are these other choices you could make

Dázon: If you're poor and young, well, here's your Norplant, go forth and- right? And so, or your implant. Your implant. So, Roe was never enough in terms of making sure that people had the appropriate care and protections for the types of births and deliveries that they wanted to give. Roe-

Jennie: Or getting decent sex ed.

Dázon: Start with that, right? Roe was never enough to make sure that everybody got the absolutely correct, correct. Comprehensive sexuality and sexual health information that they needed. And I still, I'd be one of these who argued that even if we had the most robust program on sexual and reproductive health, comprehensive health education, I wouldn't trust our schools. Not nan bit. Nan is a number where I come from. I wouldn't trust that, I believe wholly that we have to have a structure of community-led, community-based comprehensive sexual health education, because mama's grandmama's aunties didn't get it. Uncles, daddies didn't, brothers didn't get it, and the shopkeeper didn't get it, and the faith leader didn't get it. So, if we had these community education, the ways that we educate people around recycling, the way we educate people around the climate, the way we educate whole communities and how to take care of whole communities, why isn't sexual and reproductive health a part of that to take care of whole community? So, that would be where I think reproductive justice also has a pretty good chance of creating a different space and framework of even how we talk about comprehensive sexual health.

Jennie: Okay. I feel like I could talk to you for hours and I would love to, but I don't wanna take too much of your time. So, I always love wrapping up, not just with what is happening, but how can our audience get involved? What actions can they take right now that would be a help?

Dázon: Absolutely. Well, first and foremost, find out who and where the reproductive justice or reproductive justice adjacent organizations are in your community. And support them. Support them with your money. Support them with your time. Support them by making sure others know about them. Support them with your, you know, showing up for services and for care if they're providing something that you might need or someone that you know might need. So, that's the first thing, is to get involved, to get to know them and to get involved in those organizations because trust and believe, they are struggling right now. They are struggling not only to keep their doors open, they're not only struggling to keep the services going, but they're also struggling to make sure that they have the love and support and attention from their own neighbors and communities that should be here for us. That's the first one. The second one is to continue to pay attention. I don't care whether you're in a blue state, a red state, a burgundy state, a purple state, it doesn't matter, whatever—'cause there's lots of shenanigans, right—whatever the law and policy work is that's going on in your state legislature, pay attention and be involved. You know, the organizations that I'm talking about, because of our 501 C3 status, there's only so much that we can do. But as individuals, you can go and tell 'em exactly what you want them to do and how you want them to vote. And so, that is what we are encouraging people, is to get more engaged. Don't wait for another election year to come around, some of your legislatures are meeting all year long in the state of Georgia. We only meet 40 days, once a year, but it's those 40 days that we make sure as many people as possible are up under that gold dome and are as active as possible talking to their legislators. That's the second thing. The third thing that I wanna make sure that we're doing is creating spaces where we can have these conversations with our families, with our communities, with our friends, with the people that we engage with on a regular basis. That we're not getting into these tête-à-têtes, that we're not getting in these push back and forth on ideology and beliefs, but that we're having real informed conversations about what's real and what's not real. Because there's got to be a way that person to person, we can counter and undo the damage that the misinformation and the disinformation that is flooding the internet, flooding social media, flooding all of our information sources that we have to be the harbors of the truth and of the, of the facts and of the real information. So, that's the third thing that I think is probably the most important thing, is to know the truth, know the facts, and be comfortable in sharing those and having conversations about those facts without engaging all the emotions and all the ideologies, but just the realities of what's actually happening and moving people to thinking and talking about it in those ways. Because the other way has not served us.

Jennie: I'm a big fan of that one. I really believe in making yourself a resource. And you don't need to know all the things. You don't need to know all the things. Right. But if you know where you can point people for them to get unbiased information, good information, that is invaluable.

Dázon: Yeah. And watch out. I know in the state of Georgia—we have a proliferation of them—watch out because there will be an exponential growth in the fake abortion clinics. Oh yeah. In these so-called "crisis pregnancy centers," or what they call themselves as "pregnancy resource centers." Watch out for them, be able to identify them, warn your friends and family about them, and do what you can to make sure that they are not allowed to do the damage that so far the law is allowing them to do. They're ramping up and they're scaling up. They're gonna become actual full on clinics that in some instances clinicians may be required to refer people who are undecided about their pregnancies to.

Jennie: I forgot about that.

Dázon: Yeah. So, it scares me to think that we're creating a shadow system of reproductive healthcare that's not actually full reproductive healthcare with the, with the respect, with the equity, and with the truth and real services that people deserve. And so, if there was a fourth element to what I'm saying right now, it's really watching out for these so-called "pregnancy centers" that are no more than judgmental shaming spaces that are doing the work of the far right to force pregnancies.

Jennie: Yeah. And bringing that back to our, the beginning of our conversation, we are also seeing them start to go global.

Dázon: Oh, they've been global. They're just going bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.

Jennie: Yeah.

Dázon: I mean, I'm in the state of Georgia. We have I think at the last count we have 89 of them where there might be four or five well women clinics in the whole state of Georgia, but there's 89 of the fake clinics and they have their own separate line item in the state budget.

Jennie: And a lot of states have if you see "choose life" license plates in your state, often they go to crisis pregnancy centers.

Dázon: That's a lot of where their money comes from. Plus our governor gives him money out of his discretionary budget.

Jennie: Well, Dázon, thank you so much for being here. I very much enjoyed talking to you today.

Dázon: Jennie, thank you so much. I've enjoyed talking with you.

Jennie: Yay!

Dázon: This is great. I've had fun. Thank you so much. I mean, you know, I'll close on this one. I know we're talking about some heavy stuff that could just have people stewing and boiling and, you know, needing to grab another cup of tea. But what my best friend Loretta J. Ross says is that fighting hate should be fun. So, you know, I'm finding joy every time we get a chance to have this conversation because it is fun to make sure that you're bringing the truth and bringing the facts and bringing the reality of people's lived experiences in the face of all of these challenges so that the opposition doesn't have room to hide and they can't run from it. So yeah, I'm gonna chase you with all the fun and all the facts that I possibly can muster.

Jennie: Aw, thank you. Okay, y'all, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Dázon. It felt like the right episode to put out today, since this is the day after Trump's inauguration when this comes out, I wanted something that was a little more hopeful. We'll have episodes reacting to the parade of I'm sure unending actions that are attacking our rights in the future. But I wanted something with a little more hope today. So, I hope you enjoyed it. And with that, I will see everybody next week. [music outro] If you have any questions, comments, or topics you would like us to cover, always feel free to shoot me an email. You can reach me at jennie@reprosfightback.com or you can find us on social media. We're at @RePROsFightBack on Facebook and Twitter or @reprosfb on Instagram. If you love our podcast and wanna make sure more people find it, take the time to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Or if you wanna make sure to support the podcast, you can also donate on our website at reprosfightback.com. Thanks all!