Reproductive Justice Advocacy + Movement Building

We know that the work of Reproductive Justice must be fundamentally entwined with our Tewa Women United values in order to meet our community needs.  For us this means that we respect birth as ceremony; circle around the whole family; honor the sacredness in all things; attune to the qualities of relationships; support a culture of consent; protect the rights of a parent to make choices about their reproductive health in the way of their choosing; and acknowledge Woman as First Environment.

Our program works to strengthen community networks, partnerships, and policies to improve access to reproductive healthcare and early childhood services for low income families, Indigenous women, and people of color in our rural and underserved area. We do this by advocating for policies, best practices, and strategies that uphold the health and wellbeing of families in New Mexico. We provide training and resources to ensure leadership development for clients and the community to take on active roles and participation in strategies that are most important to them. 

We know that to achieve Reproductive Justice, we must:

• Recognize the interconnections of identities and issues.

• Focus on the control of genders, bodies, sexualities and families – In asserting body sovereignty, its important to understand that gender and reproductive oppression lift up and promote the supremacy of white, cisgender, wealthy men and allow them to control the bodies and family formation of those who are not men, cisgender, white or wealthy.

• Ensure rights, resources, recognition and respect for all families – For all families in all communities to thrive, it’s critical that they are fully recognized for their humanity in ways that ensure they have rights and resources through culture and property.

• Work towards individual change, cultural change, and institutional change – by challenging gender oppression at every level and by ensuring responds to the conditions on the ground, and is sustainable over time.

• Be led by the communities most impacted by reproductive oppression – Although everyone is affected by reproductive oppression, people who are most directly affected, targeted, and made vulnerable are most able to describe the harm, identify root causes, and formulate the solution.  (Source: “We are Brave; Building Reproductive Autonomy and Voices for Equity Toolkit” from Western States Center)