Connected Struggles: Reproductive Justice & Palestine
Dear friends, allies, partners, and supporters,
The past five months witnessing the ongoing destruction of Gaza and the genocide of Palestinians has enforced that for us to live by our values, we must speak up. As a small, relatively new organization, it has taken time to solidify how to best show up in this moment and how to clearly craft and communicate our collective stance, but we know that if we do not raise our voices, we allow violence to perpetuate.
Apiary for Practical Support was founded on the Reproductive Justice (RJ) framework, which broadens our understanding of reproductive freedom beyond simply legal access to abortion to the full understanding of the overlapping systems of oppression both intricately linked to and tangential to bodily autonomy.
Reproductive justice includes:
The right to have a child at a time you choose
The right to not have a child using birth control, abortion, and/or abstinence
The right to parent children in safe and healthy environments free of state or personal violence
We stand with our partners and allies who have been speaking up since October 7th and before who have so eloquently and movingly drawn the links between destructive actions in physically distant locales and their direct consequences on the ways abortion access is and will continue to be restricted and punished here in the United States. We especially want to uplift the statements of ARC-Southeast and West Fund and Frontera Fund. We are also guided by Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Occupied Jerusalem and Palestinian citizens of Israel and across the worldwide Palestinian diaspora. We support Jewish voices across the world who have spoken up, endorsing the Free Palestine movement amidst the complex space of navigating increased anti-semitism and an unwavering belief in the sanctity of all life. We want to highlight words from the Palestinian Feminist Collective, the Adalah Justice Project, and Jewish Voice for Peace.
We are speaking about this because we must, not just in solidarity with our movement partners and the wider community, but because our grounding in reproductive justice demands we do.
RJ bridges the gap between legal availability of reproductive rights and the resources needed to act upon them. Systems of oppression including colonial occupation, imperialism, and white supremacy make it impossible for the people living under them to have bodily autonomy and full reproductive freedom. Our work must include addressing and working to dismantle these systems in order to fully realize a world in which everyone has reproductive freedom.
When holding and enacting these principles, we center those most impacted by systems of oppression domestically and abroad. The U.S. was founded on genocide and enslavement, the legacy of which continues and is felt in our bodies, is reflected in the legal landscape, and is how the U.S. continues to exert power globally. That exertion of power continues to influence genocide, oppression and political threats across the world, including U.S.-funded assaults on Gaza, resource extraction in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, and innumerable capitalist-motivated interventions. We are watching as Rafah is being invaded and the assault on Gaza by Israel and the U.S. enters its sixth month after more than 75 years of ever-increasing oppression. The war in Sudan and related displacement of its population is entering its eleventh month. Haiti is under threat of yet another U.S.-led military invasion.
Here in the United States, we mourn Nex Benedict, a victim of ongoing anti-Indigenous sentiment and gender oppression. We witness the legacy of racism and xenophobia in forced sterilizations by ICE and in the prison system, sterilizations inherently linked to a history of forced sterilization of Black and Indigenous women that continued through the 1970s. We stand on stolen land that now holds 16% of the global prison population, where we frequently bear witness to unyielding police brutality.
These seemingly disparate systems are forever linked.
They are based on the same root systems of white supremacy, capitalism, misogyny and anti-queerness. The genocide of Indigenous people served as a roadmap to the Holocaust. The same white supremacy and belief in the right to African resources that led to the Transatlantic Slave Trade is seen in the U.S.’s continued extraction of cobalt in the DRC and petroleum in Sudan and throughout the region. The legacy of kidnapping and enslavement of Black people is inherently connected to ongoing U.S. intervention in Haiti, the site of the only slave revolt to garner independence. Abortion restriction itself - and even the current practice of gynecology - holds roots in the U.S. history of enslavement, prioritizing the wealth of enslavers over the bodily autonomy of those enslaved.
We mourn all lives harmed and taken in these most recent conflicts and through long-standing oppression and warfare. U.S. imperialism uses our tax dollars to further this legacy, to fund and support violent regimes. We continue to divert vital funds to offer ongoing support of an apartheid state, to violently extract resources, to facilitate warfare. As U.S. citizens, as an organization focused on the U.S., we bear responsibility for this history and its ongoing impacts here and throughout the world.
To uphold that responsibility, we call for:
A permanent ceasefire in Palestine including the return of water, food, fuel, electricity, medical supplies and personnel in Gaza.
The ending of all U.S. diplomatic, military, and financial support of the Israeli Occupation.
The release of all those in captivity — Palestinian and Israeli.
An end to U.S. interventionist policies in the DRC, Sudan, and globally whose focus on resource extraction relies on reproductive oppression and sexual violence against Indigenous communities.
The reestablishment of Indigenous sovereignty and land stewardship in the U.S., Historic Palestine and globally, including the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees.
An end to the U.S. Occupation including a dismantling of the U.S. military industrial complex, an end to inhumane immigration policies and detention, an end to incarceration practices in the U.S. and abroad.
A shift from U.S. spending on imperialism and militaristic international policies to crises in the U.S. such as debt relief, universal healthcare, universal childcare, housing security, food security, climate change, livable wages and the many necessary interventions to ensure safe, legal, accessible abortions.
In the words of Gwendolyn Brooks, “We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.”
In solidarity,
Apiary for Practical Support