Reproductive Justice

BARBARA GURR is an assistant professor in residence in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at the University of Connecticut at Storrs.

• Commonly Used AcronymsPart I Introductions: The Stories We Tell and Why1          Introducing Our Relatives and Introducing the Story2          Stories from Indian Country  3          Whose Rights? Whose Justice? Reproductive Oppression, Reproductive Justice, and the Reproductive BodyPart II         Tracing the Ruling Relations: Health Care, the Reproductive Body, and Native America4          The Ruling Relations of Reproductive Health Care5          Producing the Double Discourse: The History and Politics of Native-U.S. Relations and Imperialist Medicine6          “To Uphold the Federal Government’s Obligations . . . and to Honor and Protect”: The Double Discourse of the Indian Health ServicePart III        Consequences of the Double Discourse: Native Women’s Experiences with the Indian Health Service7          Resistance and Accommodation: Negotiating Prenatal Care and Childbirth8          One in Three: Violence against Native Women9          Genocidal Consequences: Contraception, Sterilization, and Abortion in the Fourth-World ContextPart IV        Reproductive Justice for Native Women10        Community Knowledges, Community Capital, and Cultural Safety11        Conclusions: Native Women in the CenterAppendix A: Methods and MethodologiesAppendix B: A Brief History of Federal Actions Impacting Native HealthcareReferencesIndex

"Gurr does not present Native women as theorists about these policies. She looks to the promising ways forward offered by Native reproductive justice organizers, while not romanticizing the impact this work has had on communities overall." (Women's Review of Books) "In Gurr's analysis we hear the voices of Lakota women, we see the structural limitations and oppressions that contribute to a system of reproductive injustice, and we are asked to envision new pathways for activism. She effectively calls on scholars, activists, legislators, and tribal leaders to do more to move Native women's experiences to the center of conversations about health, wellness, justice, and citizenship in America." (Women and Social Movements) "Gurr’s book is a remarkable tour de force that presents, in elegantly lyrical style, a scathing analysis of the status of Native American women when the government simultaneously claims their bodies and their sexuality, while erecting immutable barriers of exclusion through legal and political subordination." - Loretta Ross (co-founder of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective) "This is a much-needed, long overdue effort to fill the gap in what we know about Native American women’s health and their access to reproductive justice more broadly." - Jeanne Flavin (author of Our Bodies, Our Crimes: Policing Women's Reproduction in America)