The New Green Wave
Reproductive Justice in the Gulf South and Beyond
Reproductive Justice
Our seminars pair established and emerging scholars with community partners, seeking to better understand this tumultuous moment collaboratively. The broader aim of our seminar is to elucidate the ways reproductive justice is related to other movements for social justice, including movements for racial, gender, environmental, housing, educational, and human rights justice. We hope to explore new ways of addressing reproductive injustice by placing the intersecting challenges of race, gender, the environment, and class—and those most affected by them—at the center.
Our Mission
Combining scholarship and activist networks, we seek to center Louisiana, and the perspectives of those who have been historically marginalized, in an exploration that fuses the dynamism of the arts with the intellectual rigor of the humanities.
Abortion in Louisiana and the World
Louisiana has among the highest maternal mortality rates in the nation. The recriminalization of abortion in Louisiana in the wake of Dobbs is poised to have devastating consequences for women’s health far beyond the space of the abortion clinic. Outside of the U.S., the “Green Wave” (Marea Verde), a movement in Latin America, has expanded abortion access in several countries through social, political, and legal activism. The New Green Wave places Louisiana, and the narratives of its most at-risk peoples, in a conversation with the world.
Scholarship and Activism
SisterSong defines reproductive justice as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.” The New Green Wave Sawyer seminar series will explore the intersections, and sometime divergences, of scholarship and advocacy in the reproductive justice movement, encompassing maternal mortality, environmental justice, reproductive autonomy, and criminal justice reform, and more.
Symposium
International Movements for Reproductive Health and Justice
October 11, 2024